“This feeling of nostalgia is both grief and joy at the same time:” Curator Makeda Tadesse in conversation

 

As I entered Public Functionary for the opening reception of Adera, Lije; Adera Lijen (አደራ ልጄ፤ አደራ፣ ልጄን), walking past the café counter at the entrance, I met the backs of a crowd of people in the dark, all facing another café, entirely fabricated within the gallery. This café, like the real one, was warmly lit from above, furnished with plain round tables and simple chairs, and had a narrow countertop built into the wall behind it. The silent crowd had paused to watch a performance of kerar, a harp-like instrument, by a young man seated at one of the tables.

The performer was Philipos (Philly) Solomon, the younger cousin of Makeda Tadesse, the curator of this remarkable show, now open through August 17 in the Public Functionary main gallery. The moment encompassed so much of what makes the show special. There was a dream-like quality to watching a performance inside the image of a café just beyond a real one, like the vividly colored dream-memory paintings of Bereket Adamu and Nafyar. It was an invitation to engage the senses as a pathway to honoring memory, as with the frankincense and coffee beans encased in small, open translucent boxes within the gallery. And as with the show overall, Tadesse had prepared a quiet, considered holding of space — in this case literal, Solomon performing from inside the gestural café — for a young diasporic artist to touch their familial past and step into their own identity through an act of their own creation.

 

Top: The temporay café installation. Photos of the opening reception courtesy Public Functionary. Photo by Donny. Bottom: Philly Solomon playing a washint. The kerar sits nearby leaning against the chair. Photo by Santiago Rojas.

 

The show is composed of the work of four artists: the paintings of Adamu and Nafyar on silk, mylar, and canvas; the meditative ceramics of Addisalem Alemu; and a stunning poem by Elsa Lakew, here printed on a large floor-length scroll, hung from the ceiling over a deep red rug. Tadesse (who also goes by Keda) shows a new video work, as well, and includes two photographs documenting the early years of Odaa, the first Ethiopian restaurant in Minneapolis, where sponsorship was organized for hundreds of Somali, Oromo, Eritrean, and Ethiopian refugees.

I sat down with Keda the following week in the fabricated café, where an artist talk will be held on Thursday, August 15th. We talked about the show’s origin, finding art on Tik Tok and Instagram, and how she sees her role as curator.

 

Poem by Elsa Lakew. Photos of the opening reception courtesy Public Functionary / photographer: Donny.

 

Scott Melamed: What snacks fueled you through install?

Makeda Tadesse: So, it’s bad, but Celcius. Celcius–

 

SM: The energy drink?

MT: (laughs) Yeah. I love a yerba mate. And I was eating a lot of Centro crunch wraps. Centro and Maya’s have my order memorized.

 

SM: How about music?

MT: Surprisingly, not a lot of Ethiopian music. I'm really into Malian folk music. It's called desert folk, I played a lot of that. A lot of Hiatus Kaiyote, random bands like that. That was really helpful to get my energy up. Get me excited for the show.

 

SM: I’m curious if any of the artists were there at the opening Saturday night.

MT: Yeah — of the four artists in the show, three were there. Nafyar was there, Addis came a little bit later, and then Elsa, who is the poet, flew in from Virginia, which I was just overjoyed about. I didn't know that she was coming until the day before, it warmed my heart.

 

SM: When did you first start conceptualizing this show?

MT: I started building this idea in January 2023. It feels like it has been my whole life, though, growing up, questions, encountering things. So as an exhibition, last year is when I put in my proposal to the Emerging Curators Institute. But the material is very intimate, very personal. 

 

SM: You are a fellow through the Emerging Curator Institute. Who was your ECI mentor?

MT: I got connected with my mentor, the artist Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware from Toronto, in November 2023. Syrus is a phenomenal person, a great artist, I really loved talking to him. He’s really great with, like — sometimes, I felt my ideas were too big and I had to control them. But he was really good at saying, No, it's okay, you can keep going. 

 

SM: Is there an example of that in the show?

MT: I had gotten a passing comment at one point about how I was approaching this curation as an artist, and that sort of deterred me at the time. I felt like, you know, am I doing something essentially wrong? This is my first exhibition. From the beginning, my biggest motivator was to be holding the artists, so I was really anti- incorporating my own work into this exhibition. I wanted this to be a space of holding the artists, their works are so strong.

In speaking with Syrus, the way he framed it is: everyone has their own path into curation and their own flavor or language with it. And this is my own language and style. What I found is, approaching the show as an artist allowed me to connect with the artists easier. Because I could see what they see, or I could communicate certain things that they also wanted to communicate. Public Functionary was really supportive about that, too.

 

SM: What was the order of the artists coming into the show?

MT: The first was the poetry. One of my best friends, Nya, sent me this video on Tik Tok. And it was a slideshow of this text. She knew about my exhibition and that I was looking for Horn of Africa artists. I remember reading through it and thinking it was beautiful, and reaching out to the author. I was not confident she would respond, because the poem was blowing up, she had a lot of followers. I was like, shot in the dark, really hoping for the best. She loved the idea. We connected, and then we kept meeting. 

 

Photos of Abraham Oluma. Photo courtesy Public Functionary / photographer: Rik Sferra.

 

I then found Mr. Oluma through Black Archives on Instagram. The account collects and posts archival photos from across the United States, of black neighborhoods, communities, from the 1930s onward. I was scrolling and I saw these photos. The first one was the one of his face. And then the second one was with the injera. It wasn't until I read the caption that I saw they were from the Hennepin County archives. 

 

SM: Those photographs are incredible. The expression on his face.

MT: Yeah. I had no way of connecting with him. I had no idea if he was still in the state. I didn’t even know if he was alive. Then I was hanging out with a friend of mine, actually the friend who helped me record this video. And he said, Oh, I know exactly who you're talking about, my dad immigrated here at the same time, I can connect you with him. It was a wonderful meeting at the Red Sea in Ceder-Riverside. Mr. Oluma had never seen the photos. When I showed him, and after we started talking about his role in bringing hundreds of refugees here, he made it clear this was not that big of a deal to him. It was very like, “Yeah, of course, why wouldn't I do that?” And that felt so resonant to this responsibility of action that I think the artists in this show echoed. 

After that it was Nafyar. And then Bereket, and then finally it was Addis. Addis’ ceramics are the only work that is technically new. I was really open to having Addis bring in older pieces. But they were really inspired by the conversations we were having. 

 

SM: You write in the digital program (available via QR code at the show) that, after your conversation with Mr. Oluma, you had to take an “honest pause,” and adjust your framing question for the show. The new question was–

MT: It was: "How do I explore remembrance without distorting memory, without romanticizing the past?"

 

SM: Can you tell me about that?

MT: Yeah, that conversation with Mr. Oluma. I ended up having a lot of conversations with other artists from the Horn of Africa, curators of shows about, if not this, then similar subject matter. I always brought up a genuine question:  how do you address nostalgia, which is very commonly an emotion that is — I often say that English isn’t as comprehensive of emotions as the ones I sometimes feel. And tezeta is the word that means nostalgia. It truly is looked at as an emotion beyond a deja vu moment. I asked everyone, how do you honor that tezeta without romanticizing a history that isn't clean, a history that does have civil conflict and humanitarian conflict and all these things. And as someone who was born in 2000, in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, how do I address that? How do I not romanticize or disrespect, how do I honor people who had to leave their home, as my parents did? One really wonderful answer came from Wosene Worke. He's a painter and an elder, who is now based, I think, in Oakland, California. I was so blessed to speak with him. What he said was, this feeling of nostalgia is both grief and joy at the same time. We cannot feel guilt for feeling the grief, because it still is yours. There's that word about what it is where trauma is stored in the body and in your DNA: epigenetics. And so grief can kind of work in the same ways as the joy. It's carried on through generations. To have that feeling of desire and joy for that past is okay as well. That was a very comforting answer, I think, to that first question that came from speaking with Mr. Oluma. The answer is to honor it in the way of having exhibitions like this.

 

Paintings by Nafyar. Photo courtesy Public Functionary / photographer: Rik Sferra.

 

SM: The display of Nafyar’s paintings is so striking. The two paintings hang freely from the ceiling, unframed, not flush to the wall, and they are stabilized by little rock piles at the base. Can you tell me about that — did you work with the artists on your vision for displaying their work, or was it more independent? Did you feel like you needed to or wanted to defer to them about any of it?

MT: With all of the artists, I did present ideas that I had. Mostly because, in the same way that this exhibition feels very intimate to me, we were sharing that intimacy a lot. A lot of our conversations and initial meetings were us sharing anecdotes, stories from being young, our own feelings about growing up and what it meant to be immigrants or second gen or anything. And so it was really important to me that I was respectful. So I shared this idea and Nafyar really enjoyed it. I didn't want to stretch their canvases because the paint goes all the way to the edges. With works that are so large, I felt like them being flat on the wall would kind of prevent people from getting as close as they are, which I wanted. And so I really wanted it to be a lot more inviting. Especially because they're so large and there's so much detail. 

So yeah, I did always defer, even with Addis’ work. That space [a deep green room, in which the plinths and walls and floor all painted the same color] was one of my very first visions for this show. I had it before I had much of anything else, as if the ceramics — I didn’t know they would be theirs at the time — were floating in space. But I waited until I had confirmed Addis and I said hey, this is the idea that I have, what do you think? And they loved it. And they loved that color, too.

 

Ceramics by Addisalem Alemu. Photo courtesy Public Functionary / photographer: Rik Sferra.

 

SM: Were there any moments from the opening, interactions with people who came up to you, that you thought about later that night? 

MT: At the very end, after everything had closed, I was walking to my car and casually talking to some folks. People were saying how much the show was resonating with them, and this person and I ended up talking in the parking lot for thirty minutes. We were sharing anecdotes, stories of growing up, things that resonated with both of us. And the beautiful thing about it was they're not from the Horn of Africa at all, they're from a different region in Africa entirely. And so, to be able to connect in that way, about this experience of being first or second generation diaspora, and to have a similar experience, was so meaningful. We were talking about elements in the show that really resonated with them, one of those being Elsa’s poem about having this language that, you know, maybe growing up you wanted but also separated from.

 

SM: Okay, last question: People want to come see the show. They’re coming, they’re going to make a night out of it. Program the rest of the evening.

MT: Oh this is good, okay. They come to the show and then they go to dinner at Bolé, which is in Como, not too far from Northrup King Building. It's an Ethiopian restaurant, one of my personal favorites. Get some really good food. Then go down to Boom Island, the upper river bridge area, that secret overlook. Go there, take a walk around, maybe make it a picnic. That would be really wonderful if the weather is right. ◼︎ 

 

The PF Café during the opening reception. Photo courtesy Public Functionary / photographer: Donny.

Adera, Lije; Adera Lijen (አደራ ልጄ፤ አደራ፣ ልጄን) is on view in Public Functionary's Main Gallery, 1500 Jackson Street NE, Northrup King Building Studio #144. Gallery hours: 11am – 7pm, Wednesday - Saturday. Now through August 17.

There will be an artist conversation Thursday, August 15 at 7pm, moderated by Makeda Tadesse. Open to the public.

If you’re an artist from The Horn (region between and within Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) or the greater East Africa (especially but not limited to Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti), and you’d like to share reflections on the questions asked of the artists in this exhibition, Keda would like to hear from you. Information about accessibility can be found on the show webpage.  

Banner image courtesy of Public Functionary / photographer: Rik Sferra.

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This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. 

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