THE OROMAYE PROJECTS (2011- )
Winner of a 2015 Creative Capital Award and a 2014 LEF Foundation Grant
In an Asmara hotel room in 1982, Ethiopian writer Baalu Girma secretly wrote Oromaye, a novel about the communist Ethiopian government’s “Red Star” campaign to defeat Eritrean opposition. Ten days after Girma quietly published Oromaye, government censors ordered it to be removed from all bookstores. Five months later, Baalu Girma disappeared, never to be heard from again. Oromaye is still read widely in Ethiopia today and the question of how to dissent continues to be a relevant one.
The Oromaye Projects explore the legacy of Baalu Girma and his fiction in light of contemporary Ethiopian culture, politics and literature. This constellation of projects takes many forms (photography, videos, public readings, theater workshops, literary translations) including:
Scramble for the Sky (2016): An ongoing series of 40"x50" pigment prints of construction sites in urban Ethiopia, symbols of the economic growth that renders political dissent so precarious (see longer text below)
Oromaye Workshops (2015-2016): a series of workshops in which participants quietly build space for free civic expression by producing art together
Colonel's Mirror (2016): A two-channel video installation
"One Needs to Listen to the Characters One Creates" (2013): Solo show of photographs, video, found objects and text at Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington, DC
"Fractured Narratives" (2013) Photography and video installation at Rollins College Museum of Art and Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University
"My Flesh and My Soul" (2013): Installation of photographs and video at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.
Chapter One (2012): A transmutation of the first chapter of the novel into a suite of photographs
Introduction (2012): Documentation of a public reading of the novel by Tegegn Samuel in a barber shop
The Actor (2012): Video interview with Tegegn Samuel
"Fiyameta's Letter" (2012): Collaborative performance with Hewan Simon at The Academy of Music, Northhampton, Mass.
Oromaye, Chapter One (2011): Publication of a chapter of Oromaye in English, only the second-ever literary translation from Amharic into English.
A prequel to the project is: The Preservation of Terror (2009)