Color Saturated Portraits Explore an Ethiopian Expat’s Return Home

April 16, 2016, 9:00am

Photographer Aida Muluneh was born in Ethiopia, but had a global upbringing that found her living in England, Cyprus, and the US. She’s spent the last nine years living and working in Addis Ababa, and it’s from these reflections on returning to her homeland and a saying by the artist’s grandmother that her latest solo show, The World is 9, takes its title. “Living in Addis Ababa for the past nine years has been a lesson; a lesson in humility, and a lesson in what it means to return to a land that was foreign to me,” writes Muluneh in a short essay about the exhibit. “Over the past nine years, an expression of my grandmother has stuck in my mind—she would say, ‘The world is 9, it is never complete and it’s never perfect.’” The photographs in the show pop with color, and take place in a semi-fantastical world that is as familiar as it is impossible. “In this world, we are idealists seeking perfection but living in a reality which does not afford us that balance,” Muluneh continues. “Life is unpredictable and imperfect—we must conquer these challenges with strength and endurance because the world within us and the world knocking on our door, bears the unknown future.”