Every two years, the narrow streets and canals of Venice become the meeting place of the global art world. Museum directors, curators, collectors, critics and artists from across continents gather for La Biennale di Venezia, one of the world’s oldest and most influential exhibitions of contemporary art. This year, among 100 national participations at the 61st International Art Exhibition, Ethiopia has returned with a pavilion built around an unexpectedly quiet question on one of art’s loudest stages: who gets to speak, and who remains unheard?
Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale has evolved into far more than an art exhibition. It is where museums discover artists, curators forge international collaborations, galleries identify new talent and countries present themselves through culture as much as diplomacy. Recognition in Venice frequently shapes future exhibitions, institutional partnerships and critical attention long after the Biennale closes.
The 2026 exhibition, In Minor Keys, was conceived by the late Cameroonian-Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh, the first African woman appointed Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale. Her curatorial vision encourages audiences to pay attention to quieter histories, overlooked voices and subtle forms of artistic expression rather than dominant narratives. That intellectual framework provides an appropriate context for Ethiopia’s pavilion, whose central concern is silence itself.
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Ethiopia is participating officially for only the second time. Following its debut in 2024, the country has returned with Shapes of Silence, a solo exhibition by Addis Ababa-born artist Tegene Kunbi at Palazzo Bollani in Venice’s Castello district. The pavilion is curated by Ethiopian art historian Abebaw Ayalew, while Ambassador Demitu Hambisa Bonsa serves as commissioner and Yohannes Mulat Mekonnen as assistant curator. Together, the team presents a project intended not only to showcase an individual artist but also to strengthen Ethiopia’s place within the international contemporary art landscape.
Tegene’s selection reflects a career that has steadily gained international recognition. Born and raised in Addis Ababa, he studied Painting and Art Education at Addis Ababa University’s Alle School of Fine Arts and Design before teaching at Kotebe College of Teacher Education. In 2008, he received a DAAD scholarship to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at Berlin’s Universität der Künste. Today, he lives and works between Addis Ababa and Berlin, an experience he says has profoundly shaped his artistic language.
“My work is deeply rooted in Ethiopian culture while engaging with contemporary international art,” Tegene told The Reporter Magazine. “Winning the Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor at Dak’Art Biennale 2022 was an important milestone, and representing Ethiopia at the 61st Venice Biennale is both a great honor and a responsibility. I hope it contributes to greater international recognition of Ethiopian contemporary art.”
Working through abstraction, layered paint, textiles and assemblage, Tegene explores the intersections of memory, spirituality, identity and cultural history. His works invite viewers to move beyond immediate interpretation, allowing meaning to emerge gradually through colour, texture and material.
For Tegene, silence is neither passive nor empty. It is a space where personal experience, cultural memory and social realities intersect.
“Silence has always fascinated me because it carries many meanings,” he says. “In Ethiopian culture, silence can express wisdom, respect, spirituality and resilience, but also fear, exclusion or things that cannot easily be spoken.”
He says his years living between Ethiopia and Germany also shaped the exhibition in unexpected ways.
“My experience living as a Black artist in Europe has given me a deep understanding of another dimension of silence, one that can be imposed, resulting from marginalization or being overlooked, yet simultaneously serves as a spiritual sanctuary for inner strength and resilience.”
That personal experience gives Shapes of Silence a dimension that extends beyond Ethiopian cultural traditions. It also reflects the artist’s own encounters with visibility, belonging and identity across different cultural contexts.
Rather than treating silence as emptiness, Tegene says he wanted to explore it as “a powerful space where memory, history, labor and identity become visible and legible,” adding that painting allows him to express experiences and emotions that exist beyond language.
The materials themselves are central to that narrative. Handmade Ethiopian textiles, sacred garments and industrial fabrics appear throughout the exhibition, each carrying its own history.
“Each material carries memory,” Tegene explains. “Handmade Ethiopian textiles represent tradition, craftsmanship and collective cultural knowledge. Sacred garments connect the work to spirituality and ritual, while industrial fabrics reflect globalization and the realities of contemporary life. Bringing these materials together creates a dialogue between past and present, tradition and transformation.”
Tegene’s reflection also raise questions about interpretation itself. Curatorial texts, critics and journalists inevitably explain artworks, yet Shapes of Silence quietly challenges the authority of those explanations. If silence can be imposed, the exhibition suggests, interpretation can also become an expression of power. The result is a body of work that invites viewers not simply to consume meaning, but to participate in constructing it.
The significance of Ethiopia’s participation therefore extends beyond aesthetics. National pavilions at the Venice Biennale function as platforms where cultural visibility is negotiated. They introduce artists to museum directors, curators, collectors and institutions that often shape international careers. For countries seeking greater recognition for their contemporary art, Venice is not an endpoint but a point of departure.
For Tegene, Ethiopia’s participation extends well beyond his own exhibition.
“This participation is much bigger than one artist,” he says. “It shows that Ethiopian contemporary art belongs within today’s global conversation. I hope it encourages greater institutional support, opens opportunities for younger artists and builds stronger relationships between Ethiopian cultural institutions and the international art world.”
Tegene believes the country’s greatest obstacle is not artistic ability but the systems surrounding it.
“The challenge is not talent,” he says. “Ethiopia has many outstanding artists. The real challenges are limited institutional support, funding, international networks, museum partnerships and access to global exhibitions. Creating stronger cultural infrastructure will allow more Ethiopian artists to participate internationally.”
In that sense, Shapes of Silence speaks not only through its paintings but through Ethiopia’s presence in Venice itself. The pavilion reflects a growing confidence in contemporary artistic expression as a means of engaging the world while remaining grounded in local histories and cultural memory.
Tegene also hopes the exhibition challenges long-held assumptions about Ethiopian art.
“Many people still associate Ethiopian art only with historical religious painting or traditional craft,” he told The Reporter Magazine. “Contemporary Ethiopian artists are engaged with today’s social, philosophical and artistic questions while remaining connected to their cultural heritage. Shapes of Silence demonstrates that abstraction itself can communicate history, spirituality, memory and identity.”
For Tegene, the exhibition ultimately asks visitors to rethink silence itself.
“I hope visitors leave understanding that silence is not empty,” he says. “I want them to experience painting beyond words and discover how color, texture and material can communicate memory, history, spirituality and human experience.”
Whether Shapes of Silence becomes a lasting milestone for Ethiopian contemporary art will ultimately depend on what follows after Venice. But through this pavilion, Ethiopia is not merely claiming a place on one of the world’s most influential cultural stages. It is contributing its own voice to the global conversation, sometimes through words, and sometimes, as Tegene’s work suggests, through silence.
