The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art opened the exhibition “Tsedaye Makonnen—Sanctuary.” The exhibition features seven sculptures by Washington, D.C.-based Ethiopian American artist Tsedaye Makonnen, and it explores the invisibility and violence that Black women and their communities are often subjected to, finding connections in form and themes related to alternate depictions of the power of motherhood and sisterly solidarity.

Makonnen’s seven light-tower sculptures at the center of the exhibition are made up of 50 boxes, each named after an individual lost to violence, enshrining their names with love as a form of comfort and solidarity, with a sense of hope for a different future. The artist speaks to a range of human rights issues and forms of oppression. “I am interested in representing voices that are among the most vulnerable,” Makonnen said.

“Community engagement is a core element of our museum, which was founded to promote cross-cultural understanding,” said John K. Lapiana, director of the National Museum of African Art. “Tsedaye’s exhibition speaks to these longstanding values of the National Museum of African Art.”

“Outside of Ethiopia, the DC metropolitan area has the largest Ethiopian diaspora. As an Ethiopian-born woman and longtime champion of DC artists, it is deeply meaningful that this is the exhibition opening coincides with the start of my tenure at the National Museum of African Art,” said Heran Sereke-Brhan, the museum’s deputy director. “Having Tsedaye’s work exhibited at the Smithsonian is a powerful way to center stories of oppression and resilience while countering underrepresentation in the arts.”

Makonnen envisioned the central installation in this exhibition, “Senait & Nahom: The Peacemaker & The Comforter,” while she was an artist in residence for the National Museum of African Art as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. The sculptures are in dialogue with artworks from across the Horn of Africa’s history drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. Makonnen worked with National Museum of African Art curator Kevin D. Dumouchelle to select the objects, which include examples of the types of Ethiopian Coptic crosses that directly informed the artist’s research and work, as well as related works by Ethiopian artists that express visions of motherhood and comfort, from medieval icons to works by contemporary artists Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian and Aïda Muluneh.

Makonnen is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is driven by Black feminist theory, firsthand site-specific research and ethical social practice techniques, which inform solo and collaborative site-sensitive performances, objects, installations and films. Her studio primarily focuses on intersectional feminism, reproductive health and migration. Makonnen’s personal history is as a mother, the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, a doula and a sanctuary builder.

In 2019, Makonnen was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and staged two interventions at the Venice Biennale titled “When Drowning is the Best Option feat. Astral Sea I.” In 2021, her light sculptures were acquired by the National Museum of African Art for its permanent collection, and she published the book Black Women as/and the Living Archive. In fall 2022, she was invited to perform at the Venice Biennale for Simone Leigh’s “Loophole of Retreat: Venice” and was Clark Art Institute’s Futures Fellow.

In fall 2023, Makonnen exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Africa and Byzantium”; The Walters Art Museum’s “Ethiopia at the Crossroads,” where she was also the guest curator of contemporary works that traveled to Peabody Essex Museum and Toledo Museum of Art; Bard Graduate Center’s “SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power, and Prestige”; and the University of Texas at Austin’s “If we are here.” She is currently working on a permanent large-scale public art commission for the city of Providence, Rhode Island, to be unveiled in 2025.

In collaboration with the Library of Congress and the DC Public Library, she has been working on the oral history project “Documenting the Ethiopian Communities of DC.” Makonnen returned to the Clark Art Institute as a research fellow this past summer and has an ongoing collaboration with Williams College and Williams College Museum of Art on a multimedia, cross-institutional project based on her “Astral Sea” performance and sculpture series. She lives between Washington, D.C., and London with her partner and children.

art and culture

National Museum of African Art opens exhibition by artist Tsedaye Makonnen