Booth H33
Addis Fine Art is excited to be showcasing new work by Helina Metaferia at Frieze London 2023. To mark the artist’s first time exhibiting in London, she has collaborated with the Brixton-based Black Cultural Archives (BCA) on a selection of new works that incorporate material from the BCA's extensive archives. Metaferia's mixed-media presentation at Frieze will include new tapestry works, a video installation, and sculpture.
As a continuation of the artist's recent and well-received exhibit at the Sharjah Biennial, Metaferia's latest tapestry works are all subtitled with the names of traditional storytellers across the African continent and include silk-screened archival imagery. Her sculptural crown work is modeled after crowns from the artist’s Ethiopian heritage and includes archival material from the BCA which has been scanned and then etched into brass.
Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Through a hybrid of mediums, Metaferia tells overlooked stories of intersectional identities. As a research-based artist, somatic practices, dialogical art, and written and oral archives all influence her work. Metaferia interrogates complex histories of institutionalised and systemic oppression and asks how they inform our personal experiences and interpersonal relationships.
She uses her own body as a medium in her artistic practice, as well as the bodies of participants or collaborators in her community. She is interested in how documentation and relics preserve live art in the absence of the artist, expanding the lifespan of the work beyond ephemeral moments and becoming art unto themselves. As an Ethiopian-American, the artist’s work draws upon traditional African art sensibilities, where visual art and ritual often intersect and art objects are infused with an experience or aesthetic that can layer their meaning.
Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include the RISD Art Museum (2022-2023); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2021-2022); New York University's The Gallatin Galleries, New York, NY (2021); Michigan State University's Scene Metrospace Gallery, East Lansing, MI (2019); and Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2017). Metaferia's work was included in the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2023), the Tennessee Triennial through the Frist Art Museum, and the Fisk University Art Gallery (2023). Her work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates; Kadist, San Francisco, CA and Paris, France; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY.
