The theme of the Second Addis Adwa Art Biennial — "Ethiopianism" — is not a celebration. It is an inquiry.
Ethiopianism, as a concept, has a complex and contested history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it referred to a pan-African movement that looked to Ethiopia — the only African nation to successfully resist European colonization — as a symbol of Black dignity and self-determination. It inspired the Rastafari movement, influenced the Harlem Renaissance, and shaped the political imagination of independence movements across the continent.
But Ethiopianism also has a shadow side. It has been used to justify Ethiopian exceptionalism, to paper over internal ethnic and regional tensions, and to construct a national mythology that excludes as much as it includes. The question we are asking artists to engage with is: what does Ethiopianism mean now, in the 21st century, in a country navigating the complex legacies of empire, revolution, and ethnic federalism?
The works selected for this biennial do not answer this question. They inhabit it. They explore Ethiopianism as a site of aspiration and anxiety, of pride and critique, of continuity and rupture. They ask what it means to be Ethiopian in a globalized world, and what Ethiopia might offer to that world beyond the familiar narratives of ancient civilization and contemporary struggle.
The exhibition is organized around four thematic clusters: "Roots and Routes" (diaspora and belonging), "The Body Politic" (gender, power, and representation), "Sacred and Secular" (religion, tradition, and modernity), and "Futures" (technology, ecology, and imagination). These clusters are not rigid categories — works move between them, resist them, and sometimes refuse them entirely.