Booth 56
Addis Fine Art is pleased to present a solo booth of recent paintings and works on paper by Selome Muleta this year at Liste Art Fair Basel.
Selome Muleta reflects on the relationship between the female body and domestic spaces. The figures in her paintings stare back at us reclined in chairs or curled in bathtubs, both inhabiting and embodying their surroundings. Home becomes a realm of introspection and identity, an interior world curated by its dweller. Raw, washy expanses of colour are tremulously anchored by quivering outlines. Blurring the boundary between foreground and the background, Selome’s semi-transparent figures encourage us to enter into these intimate moments of contemplation.
The female protagonists of her canvases exude an air of quiet confidence, in comfortable solitude within their spaces and psyches. Plants and animals lounge alongside the figures, representing cohabitation with the natural world as a means to nurture and nourish ourselves. Selome’s own cat is always present in her studio, at times even leaving her paw marks on the paintings. Cats materialise frequently in Selome’s works, suggesting that the domestic realm can be a domain of play and freedom, rather than order and control.
Based in Addis Ababa, Selome Muleta (b. 1992) studied briefly at Entoto Polytechnic College and Abyssinia Fine Art School before embarking on her career as a full time artist. She has presented solo exhibitions at Addis Fine Art’s London and Addis Ababa galleries, and had a solo booth at Frieze London 2022 with Addis Fine Art. Her work has been acquired by the Denver Museum of Art, where it is now on view as part of the recent reinstallation of the museum’s Modern and Contemporary Arts of Africa galleries. In 2024 Selome was nominated for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize 2024, and was exhibited at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town. She recently took part in a dual exhibition with Youssra Raouchi at Addis Fine Art, London.
