Elizabeth Giorgis | Addis Ababa University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Elizabeth Giorgis

Callaloo

Perhaps one could say that everything about Skunder’s life—the sizzling of his ideas or the over ... more Perhaps one could say that everything about Skunder’s life—the sizzling of his ideas or the over intensity of his artistic talent—is surreal and at times hard to imagine. I remember the evening in September 1996, when I was first introduced to him. I had expressed my intent to write an article on him when he told me to come back to his studio/workspace in Washington, DC, the following day. We met the following day with all intentions on my part to talk about his work. Instead, he gave me a bulk of videos, tapes, and books of Ethiopian history, of African American comedians of the 1970s, and of speeches of civil rights activists that I thought at first were totally inappropriate. He engaged me in unfamiliar, peculiar, and riddled conversations such as the Chalcedonian and Monophysite doctrine of the Orthodox Church. This doctrine, I later learnt, was a debate between two ideologies on questions of whether Christ’s nature remains altogether divine and not human even though he has taken on an earthly and human body with its cycle of birth, life, and death. Of course, I was puzzled by all these overtures at first, but then I realized that it was as if he wanted me to see the metaphor of his work, and rightly so, as the paintings of Skunder Boghossian are deeply expressive in a spiritual way where art is more than a language spoken. It is metaphysics, a critical study, or yet again a systematic view of Skunder’s own natural environment. The Chalcedonian and Monophysite discussion was to show me the interconnectedness of cultures as Monophysites, I found out, were the ones that trekked down from the Near and Middle East to the region of what is now called Ethiopia. And through my friendship with Skunder that began in September 1996, and lasted until his death in 2003, I found his artistic brilliance and passionate overtures connote a certain reality but always within a universal concept of ingrained myths, symbols, and allegories unique to people of color. Skunder was born in Addis Ababa in 1937, to an influential father of Armenian descent and an Ethiopian mother. His training in art informally began at the then Teferi Mekonnen School. It was while he was a student at Teferi Mekonnen that he also met Larry Erskine, an African American neighbor who introduced him to the Voice of America jazz program that used to be relayed to Addis Ababa from Tangier. And ever since then, music, and particularly jazz, has molded and formed the colors and shapes of his canvas. In 1955, at the age of seventeen, Skunder won second prize in abstract art at the National Art Exhibition held for the Jubilee Anniversary Celebration of Emperor Haile Selassie. Following this success, he was awarded a scholarship to study abroad. He studied at the St. Martin’s School of Art and

Focusing on modern-day political provisions that are imposed on higher education, I will give a b... more Focusing on modern-day political provisions that are imposed on higher education, I will give a brief overview for an otherwise broad and contentious issue; the contemporary challenges of present-day higher education, and particularly higher education in Addis Ababa University (AAU).

Following critical interventions of non-western epistemology in the humanities and the social sci... more Following critical interventions of non-western epistemology in the humanities and the social sciences, the past two decades showed an insurgence in African visual art with several curatorial endeavors that not only deconstructed stereotyped images of the African 'authentic' but that also presented fresh viewpoints of Africa and the African experience. Debates in African modernism that in the last two decades emanated from diasporic African artists, curators and historians successfully challenged traditional notions of modernism by introducing modernism's ambivalence and plurality. Exhibitions; among many, such as "Short Century, Liberation and Independence," 1 Authentic-Ex-Centric and Faultlines at Venice, 2 and journals such as NKA, Journal of Contemporary Art (Duke and Cornell University) challenged the canonical ontology of Western art and gave new importance to the creative principles of Africa. Complex aesthetic, political, and philosophical questions continue to dominate discussions of African modernity and modernism in the Western art platforms. But how has this shift in curatorial power been significant to African art and African artists? Where is African art today? Can African artists who live in the continent use the international platforms of contemporary African art to question changing definitions of alterity? Clearly, and gratitude mostly to our diaspora African curators, artists and critics, the analysis of African art has moved beyond hegemonic Eurocentric themes through interdisciplinary examination of modernism's epistemology, ontology, and representation.

Conference Presentations by Elizabeth Giorgis

Callaloo