Biography :
About Wosene :
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About Wosene —
For over twenty-five years, Ethiopian-born artist Wosene Worke Kosrof has explored the aesthetic potential of language, using the written symbols of his native Amharic as the major compositional element in his work. In his paintings, the calligraphic forms of Amharic are broken apart, abstracted, and reconfigured to create a new visual language that draws upon the artist's Ethiopian heritage while incorporating his experiences as an expatriate living in the United States. As Wosene explains (the artist has chosen his first name as his professional name), "The symbols bring my culture to me and at the same time I recreate my culture with the symbols, producing a unique international visual language." Born in 1950, Wosene received his BFA in 1972 from the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa. Although Wosene's work gained early recognition within Addis Ababa's lively culture scene of the time, the oppressive political climate that developed in the aftermath of the 1974 military coup prompted him to leave Ethiopia. In 1978, he enrolled at Howard University in Washington, DC, to pursue graduate studies in studio painting, obtaining his MFA in 1980. Wosene has exhibited internationally in museums and galleries since 1970, receiving increasing recognition since the late 1980s. His work is represented in the permanent collections of museums in Africa, the United States, and Europe, including the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress. In 1998, he became the first African artist to participate in the Rockefeller artist-in-residence program in Bellagio, Italy. Wosene currently maintains a studio in Oakland, California, and resides in Berkeley, CA. Wosene has created three distinct series of works since 1980 that focus on the written language of Amharic. In his first series, entitled Graffiti Magic (1980-1987), the artist used Amharic symbols as a form of visual protest, drawing upon their conventional meanings in his work. The second series, Africa: The New Alphabet (1988-1994), created new meanings for the written symbols, exploring and including motifs from many cultures throughout Africa. Wosene began the third series, The Color of Words, from which the paintings in the (Neuberger and Newark exhibits) were drawn, in 1995 and continues to work on it to this day. In this third series, the symbols become abstract visual images that move localized ideas about history, culture, and memory beyond their culturally specific boundaries.
The improvisational quality that Wosene values in jazz is central to his artistic process. He does not work from a preparatory sketch, but begins by negotiating with the canvas, discerning which forms begin to emerge from its space. Once the Amharic symbols surface visually, he works with the lines and shapes in a process he describes as choreography or a dialogue. Wosene works using acrylic paints, a medium that fosters a sense of immediacy. He explains, "I like to work with fast-drying acrylic paints, because they draw me into the painting process and strengthen my concentration by forcing me to constantly make aesthetic decisions." Wosene readily acknowledges the complexity of his position as a transnational artist, yet resists classification as a representative of an artistic movement or group. "As an artist who worked to move traditions into contemporary art," Wosene states, "I see myself definitely as a representative of contemporary art in Africa....I also see myself as an individual, drawing on my culture, bringing my culture to the wider world...I'm simply trying to examine and interpret my own emotional understandings, my feelings, and my spiritual journey, using the Amharic writing as a base." Having lived in the United States for more than twenty-five years, Wosene's relationship to Ethiopia is shaped as much by the continuing presence of his memories as it is by his physical absence from the country itself. The artist's hybrid identity is revealed in highly textured and visually dense canvases that evoke a world in which animated dialogue around a neighborhood fire in Addis Ababa coexists with the sounds of jazz streaming from a Berkeley coffeehouse. The Ethiopia that finds expression in Wosene's art is at once culturally specific in its visual vocabulary, highly personal in its interpretation, and international in its outlook, reflecting the complex realities of contemporary artistic practice in a global society. |
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