Dripping time, fading memory

Overview
TEGENE KUNBI

Dripping time, fading memory

PRIMO MARELLA GALLERY MILANO

Born in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, Tegene Kunbi’s art draws from his African heritage while engaging with global artistic movements, fusing traditional African aesthetics with contemporary forms of expression. His artworks are colorful and balanced at the same time. Each hue is chosen and painted in conversation with the others on the canvas. From a structural point of view, the visual harmony is conveyed through the rectilinear grid, which is the ever-evolving element in the artist’s production. Depending on the tonality, density and the grid chosen, each canvas is invaded by dynamism and details.

Kunbi often recalls Ethiopia and its culture in his canvases, whether it is with the geometrical grid, which reminds us of the warp and weft of traditional textiles used in religious ceremonies, or the bright colors usually associated with gowns and African fashion.

Tegene Kunbi’s signature textural brushstrokes echo a certain primitivism: the adoration of the sight and the primal hues of the earth and of course Ethiopia. The colors are the ones characterizing his own country, from the greens reminiscent of grass and plants, to the reds and orange, a clear reflection of the clayey depressions typical of the African land. These hues are juxtaposed with scraps of traditional Ethiopian fabrics in abstract compositions allowing him to transcend the literal and delve into the emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of his subjects. The artist’s intent is not descriptive, it is instead to recall the organic nature of the soil, the powerful waves of the sea and the crisp movement of the foliage.

Tegene Kunbi considers art like a ritual, performed through repetitive gestures and movements of the brush. It is a deeply transformative, spiritual, and cultural practice that connects individuals to higher truths and collective memory.
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"COLOUR IS A VOCABULARY I USE TO GIVE VOICE TO ASPECTS OF MY CULTURAL HERITAGE"
Colour is a vocabulary I use to give voice to aspects of my cultural heritage. Each hue is a conversation with the next, producing a sense of harmony and tension. Tonality, density and the rectilinear grid are also an integral part of the work. Through this language I convey the dynamism and complexities within my personal experience and that of my community. The underlying structure of the paintings repeats across a large body of work. This warp and weft is intrinsic to that of the Ethiopian textiles used in religious ceremonies that are at once inspiration source and more recently a material within the works. This aesthetic framework is reinforced and challenged all at once throughout the painting process which in itself is a ritual and also fight to reclaim a form of spirituality

- Tegene Kunbi
Video credits:

Director - Joanna Ratajczak | Cinematography - Joanna Piechota | Editor - Patricja Piróg

A production by Lara Lurex Film UG

Berlin 2025
Tegene Kunbi

Untitled, 2025

Oil and textile on canvas, 204 × 180 cm

"A dominant feature in the work of the Ethiopian painter Tegene Kunbi is its use of strident and assertive colors. Whether this derives from Abyssinia and its long cultural and imperial history is less clear. The abstract vertical and horizontal stripes and blocks of color in Kunbi’s paintings nonetheless bear close affinities to the brilliant hues of Ethiopian heritage in Orthodox or Coptic manuscripts, murals and various patterned textiles. The artist’s free paint application, the use of rollers and brushes, the fraying of loose boundaries around the colored blocks with rough-edged overlays all this lends his work a tactile and discernible quality of handcrafted manufacture.

Less related to early abstract paint-chart structures of colored repetition and difference, they have a greater association with informal abstraction. A distinction remains in the way Kunbi lays in disparate colors directly on top of one another, in a manner reminiscent of abstract allover painting and palimpsests. The colors bleed through as if trying to emphasize the contradictory continuity of what is discontinuous - an idea further supported by titles that appear to have little relevance to the motifs at hand."

-Mark Gisborne
Installation Shots

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Works
- Tegene Kunbi , Untitled, 2025 Sold
- Tegene Kunbi , Untitled, 2025 Sold
Tegene Kunbi presents: Dripping Time, Fading Memory

solo exhibition - opening thursday 20 february at Primo Marella Gallery Milano