Tsedaye Makonnen’s studio and research-based practice explores the blurring between and transience of borders and identities, often using her body as the conduit and the material. Further creating new visual language that portrays our geographic and ancestral connectivity across manufactured borders and circumstances. As of late, her work is an abstracted participatory intervention drawing from universal designs from the Horn of Africa and found throughout the Diaspora that is both an intimate memorialization and protective sanctuary for black lives.
Makonnen invests in the transhistorical forced migration of black communities across the globe. Her latest installation titled, ‘Senait & Nahom | The Peacemaker & the Comforter’ filled the interior of a gallery space with a series of columnar light towers of varying heights named after Eritreans Senait Tadesse and her son Nahom, both of whom tragically died in a European detention center. Ethiopian Coptic Crosses are laser-cut into the stacked faces which make up the towers. Each segment of the monument’s light towers are named after individual Black women who have died by the hands of police brutality in the United States or the nefarious Mediterranean Sea—all seeking refuge in alienating lands. Rooted in ritual, ceremony, remembrance, and memorialization, the light monuments and performances create space to reflect upon and honor such moments of profound loss.
Makonnen’s multidisciplinary practice recently includes a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, DC Public Library Maker Residency, an Oral History Project Grant and the Savage-Lewis Artist Residency on Martha’s Vineyard. She has performed at the Venice Biennale, Art Basel Miami, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum, Festival International d’Art Performance in Martinique, Chale Wote Street Art Festival in Ghana, Fendika Cultural Center in Ethiopia and more. She has been taking part in speaking engagements across the country connecting migration and intersectional feminism at NYU, DPLAFest in Chicago, Common Field, Black Portraitures and more. Her current body of work that involves her light installations have been exhibited at the August Wilson Cultural Center in Pittsburgh, the National Gallery of Art and at Carroll Square Gallery in DC. Presently she is in a two-person exhibit on Black leisure, legacy and womanhood titled ‘I came by Boat so Meet me at the Beach’ at the August Wilson Cultural Center dedicated to performance art, showing the extensive work that Makonnen and Ayana Evans created during their month-long Art on the Vine residency on the Vineyard, along with many other current & upcoming group shows, performances, talks and a curatorial project. Makonnen lives in Washington, DC with her 9 year-old son.