I recently made my first visit to the birthplace of my grandparents whom I didn’t get the chance to know well. Standing on the top of a mountain helplessly gazing at the horizon, I remember slowly feeling a sudden connectedness to the soil beneath my feet and a beautiful but harsh landscape in front of my eyes. It was a fleet of memories, shifting from an initial longing for the presence of my ancestors to then a quick rush of melancholy for an uncertain future that awaits my generation and the generation of Ethiopians.

Landscape is part of our heritage and it played an important role in our making. It’s a reflection of a complex relationship between political, social and economical contexts shaping the history and memory of the people. Battles, trade routes and European routes of contact were all part of circumstances that are the result of both natural and cultural landscapes in Ethiopia.

Therefore, my identity as an Ethiopian maintains an amorphous shape constantly shifting between elements of personal and collective memories. Identity photographs I took from my family album are superimposed on archival portraits of both Ethiopian monarchical rulers and every day people from the past. The superimposition brings forward somewhat of a new being removed further from the original, speaking to not only the fluidity of memory but to the fluidity of identity in the present day as well.

The audience is encouraged to look at the images slowly, as if they navigate between the past and the future, hence staying a nomad in a dreamlike state, between yesterday and tomorrow.