An art exhibition entitled “Meeting Here” is being shown at the German House here in Addis starting from October 29, 2009.Over 70 works of two Ethiopian and two German artists are on view at the show organized by GTZ.
Intended to be as a synthesis of cooperation and linkages between two cultures, the artists Merikokeb Berhanu, Christian Voight, Karin Fiedler and Mulugeta Gebrekidan have come up with works that differ widely in style and presentation, nevertheless sharing a common theme: the impersonality of art that transcends boundary.

One of the participating artists, Merikokeb (whose names in English mean leading star) is a thirty-two-year old young artist who is practicing her trade with her friends in a cooperative gallery called the Nubia Art Studio. She has exhibited on regular basis at places such as the Russian Cultural Institute, Alliance Ethio-Francaise, Italian Cultural Institute, Makush Art Gallery, the National Museum, Bulgarian Embassy, the Hilton Hotel and even in galleries in Sudan and Djibouti.

In this exhibition, Merikokeb has presented around thirteen works, displayed at the first floor of the four-story building. None of her works bear titles yet one of the most frequently recurring images in her works are ripened fruits, blooming flowers and female wombs. The bands and arcs of bold color give the drawings the presence of murals, an area which she has specialized in at art school.
Merikokeb is reluctant to speak about her works, saying that her paintings could speak “more clearly and honestly” themselves than she ever could. “I have never tried to communicate what my paintings mean through words alone, because I believe that they can speak more clearly and honestly themselves than I ever could,” she says.
Yet she says, “The life that we are passing, the complications, the density and the crowd, the thick fog and the smoke, the happiness and the hope entice me and cause the inner section that leads to my art,”
Born in 1977 in Addis Ababa, Merikokeb studied high school at Medhani Alem Comprehensive School and joined the Addis Ababa University Fine Arts and Design School on 1998. Since then, she has been participating in several smaller projects, among other in the monumental art of mosaic at Boston Day Spa from September 2003 to August 2004.
The second floor is dedicated to artist Mulugeta Gebrekidan. He has presented sixteen works; all titled “Seeking” but separated with number variations. Mulugeta is also an interesting young artist who experiments with a canvass with barbered wire.
A graduate of the School of Fine Arts, Mulugeta has been working in stage design, art education, book illustration and costume design along with his artistic work in his studio. “I paint and make art for two reasons. One is that I have to be engaged in creativity and enjoy the process of making art. The other is that I have an unquenchable urge to express my feelings, thoughts, beliefs, the experiences and understanding of nature and my place within it. A continues search for knowledge and constant experimentation for better artist expression have been the driving forces in my art,” he says.
A devotee to the conceptual school of art, Mulugeta strives to achieve statements by manipulating materials along with transferring color in to canvass.

Christian Voight, who is an architect, painter and master of Philosophy, has presented around twenty two works. Though unable to attend the opening ceremony for health reasons, his works that highlight kinetic and luminal style from the last fifteen years and from past exhibitions have drawn attention and admiration from the visitors. Some unpublished works and an outlook for a new exhibition in 2011 together with Ethiopian artists are included.
Karin Fiedler who has presented over more than thirty works was born and grew up in Germany. She works on very colorful textile and silk materials.
She says living in Peru for six years has greatly affected her work by observing the Pre-Columbian culture and the Inka period.
“Rhythm and sound were basic for my temper while creating, sometimes classical music and the outside nature gave me a background to intensify my inspiration and got lost in colors. To me painting is mediation, colors are joy,” says Karin.
The exhibition is scheduled to remain open through December 11.

The 17th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES) will be held at the Addis Ababa University from November 2 to 6, 2009.Shiferaw Bekele, a teacher at Department of History and Heritage Management of Addis Ababa University, has written a long article about the event and its background in October 25th edition of the Ethiopian Herald.The article isn’t available online. So I am publishing an excerpt here.
The 17th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies will be held in the Akaki campus of Addis Ababa University from November 2 to 6, 2009.A few hundred scholars-Ethiopians and foreigners-are expected to take part in the proceedings: Scholars will come from Japan; Europe; the US, Israel, Russia and some other countries. Ethiopians will constitute a formidable presence. By any standard, this is a large gathering of scholars. The current congress marks the golden jubilee celebration because the first was held in Rome from 2 to 4 April 1959.Subsequent conferences were held in a number of countries in Europe (UK, Italy again, France, Sweden, Russia, France again and Norway), in the United States, in Israel and Japan. Ethiopia hosted the 3rd, the 8th, the 11th, the 14th and now the 17th congress. The number of participants had grown from a little over forty in 1959 to over three hundred attendants (including those who do not read papers). Indeed, the expansion –in terms of institutions, in the coverage of areas study and in the involvement of different disciplines of the humanities, social sciences and related disciplines- is very remarkable.
In the University in Addis the Institute of Ethiopian Studies was opened in 1963.This research institute has contributed immensely to the growth of Ethiopian studies in all fields. It has now emerged as the country’s premier institutions of research and as highly respected research center in Black Africa. It houses an excellent library on Ethiopia, Eritrea and also on Somali and Djibouti. Its collection of Ge’ez, Arabic and Amharic manuscripts is growing steadily.Its microfilm collections are very large housing Ethiopia-ralted archival materials from European, American, Egyptian and Sudanese archives as well as a large corpus of Ge’ez manuscripts. Its photographic collection continues which is expected soon to expand fast. Its galleries of art-mainly housing icons and related paintings from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahado Church-contains treasures that go back to the 13th and 124th centuries. It is a proud owner of the famous 15th century masterpiece by Fire Seyon. It also includes an impressive number of crosses covering all the centuries since the 12th.
Together with its ethnographic museum, the gallery continues to attract an increasing number of tourists from Europe and the United States as well as Ethiopians (a recent phenomenon) school children. Many heads of state and government have, over the years, visited it. Its journal, the Journal of Ethiopian Studies, founded in 1963, is still active and has served as one of the useful forums for the publication of research in Ethiopia studies.
There is indeed much to celebrate on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee anniversary of Ethiopia Studies Conferences.
The growth in the field is reflected in the increasing number of participants in the conferences. ICES is a very useful academic institution. it provides the forum for young scholars( particularly Ethiopians) to report –and to test-their (in many cases) first findings. It enables them to let their research topic known and, equally importantly, to network with other scholars. It is important to seasoned researchers because it would give them the opportunity to report the progress of their recent project, to meet fellow workers, fro mother countries and institutions, and to network. Ices also provide the opportunity to asses the state the art in the entire filed periodically. Therefore, all efforts must be exerted t o sustain into the future. Yet because of its (ever growing) size –funding is increasingly difficult to get-there is reluctance on the part of European and American scholars to organize it. In the light of this development, Ethiopian institutions of higher learning should pool together their resources to hold them every three years in the country.

On Sunday October 11, 2009, Zoma Contemporary Art Center (ZCAC), a newly finished house designed and built by artist Elias Sime in around Old Airport area, screened video of an episode from the American Public Broadcasting Service series Art:21-Art in the Twenty–First Century. Though not familiar with Ethiopian audiences, the PBS series has been running since 2001 and now is in its fifth season spotlighting artists from various parts of the world. It appeared that that each of the four episodes presented three or four artists loosely grouped around a theme, documenting the artists in their own words.
The theme of the segment that we happened to watch was ‘system’, with questions: what new grammars and logics do artists invent in today’s supercharged, information-based society? Why do we find comfort in some systems while rebelling against others?
The four artists who received the focus were the Ethiopian-American Julie Mehretu, South Korean artist Kimsooja and American artists John Baldessari and Allan McCollum.
Before the screening, curator and director of ZCAC, Meskerem Aseged made a welcoming speech to the small crowd and said that the screening was being done in partnership with PBS with the intention to increase knowledge of contemporary art, create dialogue, and inspire creative thinking.
Meskerem briefly mentioned about knowing Julie Meheretu before she became famous when she was a small-time studio artist in New York and later meeting her in Dakar, a fact that she was visibly excited about.

In the video, Julie is seen working with her assistants in Berlin on seven large canvases for a show at Deutstsche Guggenheim. The works indeed speak with considerable passion. A remarkable suite of paintings that dealt with erasure and decay was seen.
To distill a complex message in sparse, simple terms is no easy task. Yet Julie speaks in an incidentally intelligent drawl, at once inviting and challenging. In the first second of the interview, she rattled off the following.
“My earlier drawings, paintings have this map like diagrammatic elements to them. As the works shifted to atmospheric, or painterly, I try to refrain from explaining what is gong on, there is no rational description or effort to articulate in words. I’m not trying to spell out story.”
Julie is also shown working on the biggest project of her young career: a 21 by 85 foot long mural commissioned by a major financial institution in lower Manhattan, to be completed during the most severe financial crisis sine the Great Depression.
The size of the work was a little overwhelming. One of Julie’s assistant spoke about the size saying it was three times bigger than they previously envisioned, something Julie’s studio in New York couldn’t accommodate. Hence, forcing them to take it to Berlin.
Putting the brush on the canvass, Julie says “In that process, I’ve been doing a bunch of water colors. It was one thing that’ was not working. I kept pushing color into the painting where there is intense action between all those different marks. So at one point, they started to assemble and the color came to work. I turn around and looked at it. It reminded me of caves in Kabul that Taliban left behind, that image of their absence. It’ almost pathetic in, suggesting in how sad and pessimistic you can feel in a political environment.”
There are clues of ambivalence about her identity in her work and speech.
“I’m Ethiopian-American. My big part of family Ethiopian but I lived in the states since I was six. Grew up in Michigan, I live in New York City. For most part I live in Berlin now. But when I move around the world, I move around as an American.”
And then she kept on talking about the incredible privilege of being an American and the sense of responsibility it entails.
Julie’s works belies her nuanced messages of social power struggle, feminisms and global, power–elite conspiracies, practicing a form of political action with these paintings. She says, “The earlier more analytic impulse was to use very rational but kind of absurd techniques or tendencies-mapping, charting, and architecture-to try and make sense of who I was in my time and space and political environment. But there’s only so much truth to a theoretical understanding of something. the action or behavior-or what happens organically and intuitively, rationally and spiritually, or majestically-in a world is a very different thing than what can happen in our effort to understand it. So there was more of an impulse to use those approaches, trying to make sense of these two sides of myself in the earlier work. And I developed a whole langue and body of work that evolved from that investigation. But the thing that kept it all together and that keeps me going is the painting-making the pictures and drawing. In getting lost in doing that, language is invented. And that shows you something you never thought you would know about yourself or understand.”
Julie’s abstract compositions reference modernist architecture, Google Maps, coliseum-like building, and defaced structures. She says,
“Trying to figure out who I am and my work is trying to understand systems. The thing that keeps me going is the painting and in getting lost in doing that a language is invented.”
Such clarity does not lessen the richness of the work. Instead it provides the necessary framework for comprehension and revelation.

The business weekly, Fortune has carried a front page news on art sale at the recent Sheraton Addis’s Art of Ethiopia exhibition. The paper in today’s issue disclosed the most prized sale of the exhibition, a work by Mezgebu Tessema, pictured on the top, that fetched 110,000 Br. The painting was secured by Sheraton Addis. However, the pricey painting displayed at the exhibition was by Afework Tekle, tagged with a price of over a million Birr. It was not sold, though. The painting depicting a beautiful young woman, pictured here in the right, was by Daniel Taye; it was bought by Dreje Yesusework (Jambi), a close confidant of Shiekh Mohammed Ali Al-Amoudi, for 35,000 Br, the paper disclosed.
The artists whose works have been sold have agreed to “contribute portion from the proceeds of their sales towards establishing the Sheraton Art Endowment Fund”, according to Jean Pierre Manigoff, general manger of the Sheraton Addis.

For Mesfin Gebreyes Oda, art has always been an object of interest, starting from his early school days at Lycée Guebre Mariam in the mid fifties and sixties. But it was a chance encounter with the works of Ethiopian modernist artist Gebre Kirstos Desta that made him take the business of art collecting seriously, an unusual passion for an Ethiopian. The 60-year-old Mesfin recalled the day when someone approached him and asked him if he was interested in acquiring the works of the artist Gebre Kirstos. He went right away and saw the self-portrait of Gebre Kirstos and three other of his sketches. “I was so moved. I bought the whole lot, four of them. That was twenty years ago,” he told me recently, sitting in the garden of Sheraton Addis.
Since then Mesfin has been collecting paintings and drawings of Gebre Kirstos, Skunder Boghossian and many other contemporary artists.
Mesfin’s voice gets deeper and lower when he unfolds fragments of his upbringing in Addis Ababa, the city where he was born and which remains his home between his frequent trips abroad. His father Gebreyes Oda, one of the first industrialists in Ethiopia, instilled in his son a passion for hard work, humility, education, a love for French language and culture. “I always made it a point to mention my grandfather’s name. Because I have a lot of respect for my father and his background. He was educated in the French school in the old days. He worked with His Imperial Majesty. At the time of the Italian occupation, he more or less started his own business. His business steadily increased in scale and became one of the largest businesses in the country,” he says reverently.
Among his father’s accomplishments was the creation of a tire retroading plant called Ethiopian Tire and Economy Plant. For that, he was given an award for excellence in industriy from Emperor Haile Selassie I himself. Mesfin showed me an old magazine that carried photos of his father while taking the award and text of the short speech he made French.
Following his family’s tradition, Mesfin joined the Lycée Franco-éthiopian Guebre Mariam, a prestigious school in Addis. He didn’t undertake any formal art education whilst at school but from his school textbooks he recalls the works of the famous French artists such as Nicolas Poussin. “The intensity of the French culture was so much that, it affected him”, he said.
After baccalaureate, it was a complete change, as he headed to United Kingdom and attended the Chartered Insurance Institute in London. Three years later, he came back to Addis Ababa to work in various insurance companies and subsequently came to set up his own business. Hearing him talk about art, one can see Mesfin’s passion for art surpasses his love of business.
Mesfin’s first encounter with the works of Gebre Kirstos triggered his interest in art and buying his works and those of other abstract artists became an “obsession.” To this day, his principal focus remains Gebre Kirstos whose sad life and subsequent death in foreign land has touched him. “From there onwards, I was so much moved by his life history, how he ended up being a refugee and ended up dying all alone…… At the same time, it became an obsession to me to collect his works,” he says.
Mesfin at times went great lengths to find Gebre Kirsto’s works. “I went to the extent of going to strange places to find out his paintings. It was fascinating because, the places I went to were so weird. Like at one time, it was in the middle of the town when somebody who was having some financial difficulties wanted to get rid off the paintings which were given to him as wedding present,” he recalls.
Another time, students who wanted to sell a painting that their mother had been given by the artist so they could afford to go to art school. In another case, an absentee person who had given instruction from the US to sell his art works that he left with some family members to cover for his expense. During the last two decades, Mesfin by dint of great effort has amassed twenty of Gebre Kirstos’s works. Other than his friends and family members, a wider public has had the pleasure of seeing these works, as the works were shown at a first series exhibit of Gebre Kirsto’s works at Alliance-Française ten years ago. The second series exhibits commemorating the 20th anniversary of Gebre Kirstos’s death, when Mesfin himself managed to convince the Sheraton to host an exhibition.
Overseas, especially in the United States he has a number of requests to loan his collections. First it was to an art show in a private gallery in Washington DC.
He loaned them a number of Gebre Kirstos works, a year later at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art in Florida. Among the works he loaned for the museum were Organic, a beautiful piece and another, Vergessen, which had a German title.
Mesfin’s collections of the artist were featured in an art catalogue book published by the German Cultural Institute and the Addis Ababa University four years ago. “As a private collector I think I am the one who has the highest number of paintings,” he says with a pride.
Other than Gebre Kirstos, Mesfin has acquired a number of Skundur Boghossian’s works.
‘He is a very interesting character as well. He was really exquisite. He is one of the greatest Ethiopian artists. While in Paris, he frequented some famous European artists like George Braque,” Mesfin describes Skundur.
“I came across his works because I have been approached by some brokers in town who took me to his family’s house. And I acquired a couple of his works. In fact, one was from his grandmother who passed away couple of years ago” he recalls.
Mesfin came to acquire another of Skundur’s works by a stroke of luck.
An artist by the name Fikru who is mainly based in Paris came up to Addis for wedding and he mentioned to him that there was an art work of Skunder Boghossian in a Paris museum. “I got the address and I headed to Paris when I was traveling to Europe on business trip. I checked the gallery. And there was an old man who came up to me and said “I am sorry I’ve never heard of this guy.”
Still hoping, Mesfin gave him his cell phone number. “By the time I arrived at my hotel he called me up and he said I have it. I raced back and he had it mounted on a stand, it was a 1960 Skunder Boghossian work entitled “Ballets”, which was done in Paris. We had lots of argument about the price. “To get a bargain, Mesfin told the seller that he wasn’t absolutely interested in art, the only reason that he wanted to buy was to give it as a gift to someone.
At the end when he showed him his price, he grabbed it saying, “It is going to please my banker.”
How do his wife and children view his passion that cost him so much energy and money?
“My wife appreciates my passion for art. So are my children .In fact, I gave my son as a wedding present a piece of art work by Wosen Kosrof. Together with another work “From earthen to Vessel” that I bought from Emperor Haileselassie’s grand son, Isshak Fikre Selassie. I gave him those two paintings. He was elated. He told me that it was one of the best gifts he had gotten.
Asked to name his contemporary favorite artist, Mesfin readily mentions Elias Sime.
“The first time I saw his work at an exhibit, I was so impressed because he was totally different. He is unique in the sense that he uses a lot of discarded materials and I couldn’t resist buying his works, I think, about seven years ago when the curator Meskrem Aseged of Zoma Contemporary Art Center organized a show. I bought eight pieces I think, some of them done with buttons, others with yarn.
Recently, Mesfin was pleasantly surprised that Elias had made international headlines after his show at Santa Monica Museum of Art in California.
“The comments of the critics were astonishing. I have never come across an Ethiopian artist who has been so rated so favorably; Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Times. They said he was a global artist in the making, one of the greatest secret artists of our time, an incredibly talented artist, a modern shaman who understands the spiritual connection between art and life, a remarkable Ethiopian artist. This is a very serous coverage. I was glad to have acquired his works six, seven years back,” Mesfin says enthusiastically.
When pressed to say how valuable his collection of works is, Mesfin reluctantly says at least 500 hundred thousand dollars. Adding that, “I bought with passion. If I am interested in the art work, I don’t hesitate. I just go for it.”
Mesfin says Ethiopia has tremendous talented young artists. He commended the works of cultural in institution like Alliance Ethio- Française, the German Cultural Institute, and the Italian Cultural Institute. “They are doing a tremendous job by supporting young Ethiopian artists and sponsoring them. But what these artists need is exposure out side the country.”
Mesfin speaks strongly against people who collect arts just for some financial motives or social status. He says he never acquires art for the purposes of decorating or statues,
“I always collected because I was very interested in art and I wanted to promote Ethiopian arts. I hate to see some people who claim to be interested in art but who do it for their status. That is disgusting, you know. It a half-baked attempts to get some status. You know they say that there is no half-pregnancy…..”
Besides his tremendous accomplishments in the art collection, there are a couple of artists that Mesfin assisted financially. One was the late artist Bekele Haile.
“He was a very good artist. He did a beautiful painting in honor of Gebre Kirstos, his usual circles, a double face Gebre Kirstos. A very interesting work,” describes Mesfin.
Bekele was in prison for a long time. After he came out, he sponsored him for about a year.
Mesfin has also a collection of Emperor Haile Selasise’s photographs, (some autographed), and paintings, one that he was kind enough to give it to me as a present.
I just hope that some day Mesfin will open his own gallery where the works would be displayed on permanent basis.
Mesfin could be reached at mesfin_oda12@yahoo.com

By Prof. Donald N. Levine
A half century ago, the ill-fated coup attempt against Emperor Haile Sellassie I in December 1960 marked the moment when Ethiopia entered the era of modernizing revolutions. The event, I have argued (www.eineps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746), became the first of several missed opportunities that Ethiopia suffered while trying to become a politically modern state. In hopes that the 2010 elections may offer an opportunity that this time Ethiopians might seize with complete success, I offer some thoughts on the challenging year ahead.
First off, let us acknowledge that nearly all parties involved in the tragic events of 2005 seem determined not to repeat their major mistakes. The Government will not again react with excessive violence to demonstrations or public protests. Opposition candidates will not refuse to accept the positions to which they were duly elected. Both sides will probably refrain from the most grievously inflammatory elements of their electoral rhetoric and focus on issues.
Second, let us acknowledge that Ethiopia’s difficulties during the past half century reflect the growing pains of any country moving from an absolute monarchy to a modern democratic state. Compare Ethiopia, then, not with countries that already attained the conditions of functioning democracies, whereby governments change hands through popular elections–like the U.S., France, Ghana, and now Japan–but with the small group of nations that have had to deal with similar circumstances. These include Iran, Thailand, and Afghanistan. Like Ethiopia, these three countries each possessed a core of indigenous traditions as a historic state. Those traditions helped them withstand colonization during the era of European imperial expansion. At the same time, their patterns of deeply-rooted authoritarian rule at the national level posed stark challenges to their advance toward a modern political system. In 1960, no one really could predict how they would handle that massive challenge. By the mid-1970s, all of them were riven by violent political storms. And today, each of them faces serious internal conflicts.
On the stage of world history Iran was the best known of these states, for being heir to the mighty empire of Persia that flourished as early as the 6th century BCE. The honorific title of its ancient emperors was shahanshah, king of kings, comparable to negusa negest. Retrieving that title, the 20th-century Pahlavi kings initiate robust efforts to modernize the country economically and culturally from the top down. These began with King of Kings Reza Shah Pahlavi (1926-41) and continued with his son Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-78)–the latter’s reign punctuated by the short, promising regime of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh in which the king was briefly removed. In 1961, the same year that Haile Selassie introduced minor administrative reforms in the wake of the December 1960 coup, the Shah started an ambitious program of economic growth–the “White Revolution”– involving large-scale land reform and technical modernization. Yet politically, he wielded an extremely authoritarian scepter backed up by the SAVAK, a ruthless secret police. In 1978 the fundamentalist Islamist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the shah, installing a no less repressive regime. The slaughter of vote protesters during this year’s election forms a massive blot on the country’s political record, not to mention the massive human rights violations produced under the Ayatollahs. As of this writing, waves of protest against the 2009 elections continue to be met with violent repression by the state.
Siam’s political modernization began in 1932–the year after Haile Selassie offered Ethiopia its first Constitution–when the Thai military overthrew the king and announced a constitutional monarchy. In 1935 the king abdicated and his son, living abroad, became monarch in absentia for 15 years. The country’s history thereafter involved a string of armed revolts, regicides, and politically motivated arrests, jailings, and murders. Through the 1960s, bureaucratic corruption and security force harassment provoked a reform movement that brought a new constitution and popular elections in 1968. After parliamentarians began attacking government corruption, General Thalom Kittikachorn dissolved the parliament. The General’s putsch incited protests by University students in late 1973 culminating in a standoff with the military, who mowed them down with tanks and helicopters near the royal palace. The 1973 revolt brought an unstable period of democracy; the military came back after a bloody coup in 1976. Although parliamentary rule returned for the three decades following, military rule erupted in the early 1990s and again following a coup in 2006. Restored civilian government in 2007 promised stability, but nine months later massive protests provoked renewed violence and government crackdowns, igniting a crisis that persists. In April 2009 one knowledgeable observer wrote: “Over the past few years, Thailand’s political elites have waged a battle on the streets of the capital using mobs to throw democratically elected governments out of power.”
Lacking ancient lineage as a nation, the Afghan state dates from the coronation of an ambitious warrior, Ahmad Shah Durrani, as king in 1747. Even so, Afghanistan entered the modern world with characteristics similar to the three other states mentioned here. Known as “king of kings,” Ahmad Shah–like Emperor Tewodros II–unified a number of contending fiefdoms in pursuit of a sacred mission, which included a jihad against a Hindu caste. His clan was ancestral to nearly all subsequent patrimonial Afghan rulers until 1978. The Afghans maintained independence against England and Russia, fighting three wars against the British over eighty years culminating in 1919. In 1964, King Zahir Shah promulgated a liberal constitution providing for a bicameral legislature composed one-third each by popular election, royal appointment, and provincial assembly selection. Zahir’s “experiment in democracy” produced few lasting reforms; rather, the University he founded facilitated the growth of unofficial extremist parties on both the left and the right. Those extremist parties led first to the Marxist regime following a coup in 1978, and then the Taliban regime from 1991. There is no need to mention Afghanistan’s current plight of unending civil wars and recent electoral embarrassment, of which President Jimmy Carter said: “Hamid Karzai has stolen the election. Now the question is whether he gets away with it.”
In this comparative perspective, Ethiopia’s painful lurches in the direction of democratization can be grasped more readily. She can boast a number of substantial achievements in the areas of political modernization, stability, and democratization, and this in the face of unprovoked military aggression from two of her neighbors. Despite severe setbacks following the National Election of May 2005, she has now a minimally functioning multi-party system, an elected Parliament, a fairly free press, and elites who have learned the importance of nonviolent politics and civil discourse. To be sure, the coalition of opposition parties have accused the government of continued harassment of their potential candidates; political leader Judge Bertukan Mideksa languishes in prison under what legal experts consider a charge fraught with ambiguities in the pertinent law; and allegations of severe human rights violations continue to appear. Even so, Ethiopia does have potentially transparent, official channels through which each of these issues can be addressed: the National Elections Board, and two exemplary institutions established by Proclamations No. 210 and 211–the National Commission on Human Rights and the Institution of the Ombudsman.
The major responsibility for seeing to it that 2010 becomes a resounding success rests with the EPRDF regime and the Parliament. The current regime can claim enormous achievements in the areas of infrastructure development, expansion of schools and medical services, and openness to Green Technology–the energy hope of the future. There is a level of freedom of expression in the country that has no parallel in Ethiopian history. The question is: can the regime find sufficient confidence in its achievements and their popular support to relax the defensive posture, driven by insecurity, that has marked their early years along with all national governments in Ethiopia since the time of Emperor Menilek?
Perhaps above all, at a time when mutual confidence-building is more crucial than ever, can the Government shift from reacting to criticism as treason, and take robust steps toward the kind of openness they claim they really want to facilitate? A few simple steps might convince critics of their intention.
1. Ensure that the National Election Board is independent, impartial, and professional and attends to such incidents as the shouting down of opposition speakers at the peaceful assembly in Adama.
2. Provide whatever assurances it takes to move forward, as the Prime Minister affirmed recently, to devise of a code of conduct designed to put an end to harassment if it exists, or to prevent it if it doesn’t.
3. Appoint a committee of experts on constitutional law to consider the status of the law under which Judge Bertukan Mideksa was imprisoned again.
4. Activate, with serious energy and resources, the Office of Ombudsman.
5. Activate, with serious energy and resources, the National Commission on Human Rights.
A heavy responsibility also lies on the shoulders of the diverse opposition groups. A few simple steps might help the government relax and convince the public of their constructive attitude.
1. Reiterate their commitment to the importance of nonviolent politics and civil discourse.
2. Acknowledge publically their respect for the legitimacy of the current regime.
3. Focus effectively on issues and programs rather than grievances.
4. Attend to ways of building consensus rather than infighting
5. Express themselves honestly and courageously without recourse to anonymity.
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the disastrous initiative of the Neway brothers, this may be a propitious moment to stand back and appreciate how far Ethiopia has come today–in spite of the tragic events of 1960, 1974, 1991, 1998-2000, and 2005–and then to resolve to move Ethiopia forward in as constructive a manner as possible this time. It is time for EVERYONE to stop nursing grievances and extending blames, and to begin open, honest, searching discussions of issues which ought to concern Ethiopians of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints: poverty, food insecurity, energy, environment, women’s rights, health, and quality of education.
Bertatun Yisten Le Addis Amet!

A new prize named after the acclaimed Ethiopian playwright and poet Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin was launched in Addis at the National Theater on Monday, September 7. Established by the playwright’s family members and friends, the Institute of the Language Studies of Addis Ababa University Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin Memorial Prize is intended to encourage literature and theater arts students to study hard, pursue senior honors and contribute to the art world.
The prize intended to be an annual event would be given to the best contribution by a student member. Berhanu Asfaw from the Department of Ethiopian Languages and Literature and Tegegnto Sinshaw from the Theaters Arts Department were winners of the first prize. Certificates were handed to the winners by Institute of Language Studies Dean, Dr. Gessese Tadesse and chair of the Theater Arts Department, Belayneh Abune, who both talked about the contribution and legacy of Tsegaye to each of their respective departments. Belayneh talked about Tsegaye’s contribution to the theater arts department
Dr. Gessese talked about the plan to broaden up the Memorial Prize through administrating trust funds that, among others, would provide scholarships to students.
As way of remembering one of the country’s greatest poets and playwrights, a group of volunteers led by Dr. Heran Serke-Berhan had begun a permanent annual Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin Theater Festival. Involving Abate Mekuria who previously produced and directed ten of Tsegaye’s productions in Ethiopia and abroad, excerpts of the playwright’s works, Ha Hu Besedest Wer (ABC in Six Months), Inat Alem Tenu, “Othello” and “Theodros” were presented on the occasion as part of the festival celebrations.
Abate who in his younger years studied at London’s Opera House has produced numerous stage plays, including “Kitet Wede Adwa Zemecha” which required the participation of 4,000 people.
Audiences were thrilled with his re-productions of Tsegaye’s plays for which he spent no less than three months. His studio, Mekuaria Studio designed the settings and provided the costumes. It was highly successful. Tadesse Mesfin’s illustration for one of the plays was found and used for the occasion.
On the occasion it was also announced that four of Tsegaye’s plays, Theodros, Petros Yachin Seat, Zeray Be Rome Adeababy and Minilik (a historical play about King Menelik that was never staged) would be published by the Addis Ababa University Press shortly. The announcement was greeted warmly.
Tsegaye was born in Boda, a village near Ambo, on 1934.He wrote his first play at Ambo Elementary School where one of his audiences were Emperor Haile Sellassie. After doing high school at Wingate and college at the Addis Ababa Commercial College, he has studied theatre at the Royal Court Theater in London and Comédie Française in Paris for two years. Exploring elements of power, justice, love, and death in his tragedies, Tsegaye achieved widespread and lasting recognition for his work.

The second annual Art of Ethiopia exhibition took place at Sheraton Addis from September 3rd until September 6th 2009. Elegantly installed at the Lalibela Ballroom, the show included masterpiece after masterpiece by well-known and lesser-known artists.300 paintings of artists ranging from Afeweork Tekle, Ale Felege Selam and Yohannes Gedamu through young painters Dawit Abebe, Mathias Lulu were presented at the exhibition.The exhibition included different disciplines, from traditional figurative painting to abstract works, sculpture, and stone carving.

One of the works exhibited, Arada (3) by Getahun Assefa, a teacher at the School of Fine Arts Design and an artist who specialized in monumental art, displays a woman with Kirar, a musical instrument, inspired by a woman he has known in Arada, a district in present Piassa. Getahun uses oil on canvas as his favored medium, preferring it to tempera on wood panel. The work deservedly sold for 25,000 Birr.
Desta Hagos, another renowned artist with love for bright colors, displayed one of her best known works, The Joy of Colors. Desta’s bright, rich and strong colors betray heavy influence from Gebre Kirstos Desta, who was her teacher.

Another of her piece of work on display was “The Stage”, a work that she did in 1969 but disappeared subsequently. It was later discovered at the Addis Ababa University and was given back to her.
The spacious and ornate exhibition hall of the Sheraton drew unusually large number of visitors. Lulseged Retta, a participating artist and organizer of the exhibition, told Addis Journal that around 13,000 people visited the exhibition. He said the exhibition was very successful and received many positive feedbacks.
An art catalog has been printed for the show and went on sale. It was announced that all proceeds from the sale of the art catalog will go towards establishing the Sheraton Addis Endowment Fund whose purpose is to sponsor the artistic talent of Ethiopia.
As this will be the first show in which the fund comes to live, the proceeds will be used to sponsor the School of fine Arts Design here in Addis Ababa.

A prominent member of the Armenian community Sahag Boghossian has died at the age of 98 last Monday. He was buried at the St. Kevork Armenian church near Seba Deredga area yesterday afternoon.
A lawyer, businessman and patriot, Boghossian has been one of the most recognized and well-liked figures in Addis Ababa.
Born in Addis Ababa in Arat kilo on July 22, 1911, Sahag was the 8th child of ten children.His father Krikorios Boghossian settled in Ethiopia during Emperor Menelik’s time and was important in the affairs of the state.
Sahag begun education at Teferi Mekonen School and did his secondary at the Alliance Francaise from 1918 until 1920.There, he was a classmate of Kebede Michael, who later became a celebrated writer and poet.
After graduating from high school Sahag left to France and studied law in Marseille.
When he came back home, he first went into private law practice and later joined a tannery business. In this task, he was energetic, gracious, and highly successful.
Boghossian has been close to Emperor Haile Selassie and had had his factories visited by the Emperor on number of times. His love for the country was highly remarkable and during the Italian invasion, he stood against the enemy and was imprisoned for while and later fled to Djibouti.
The military regime Derg has nationalized the tannery and other of his business. Despite all the difficulties, Boghossian decided to remain in this country, the only country he called home.
His longevity meant he had a first-hand, eye-witness knowledge on issues that affected this country. Many have turned up to him to tell them his recollections of events.
Sahag is survived by three sons and seven grandchildren and the late great abstract painter Skunder Bogohssian was his nephew.