Above: Photo by Award-winning Photographer Aida Muluneh
from her upcoming book entitled Ethiopia: Past/Forward.
Tadias Magazine
Events News
Published: Friday, September 4, 2009
New York (Tadias) – “Aida Muluneh’s main fear is to lose her memory. She is afraid of losing the glances, hands, landscapes and everything that fate has presented to her. She wants to record them for the future, as testimony and confirmation that she has not made anything up; like evidence in a trial that is continually changing. What else could this trial represent but identity?” writes art critic Simon Njami in his introduction of the award-winning photographer’s upcoming book to be released in Antwerpen, Belgium, on September 16, 2009.
The book entitled Ethiopia: Past/Forward is a collection of images captured by Muluneh during her recent rediscovery of her birth country after a thirty-year absence.
Born in Ethiopia in 1974, Aïda Muluneh left the country at a young age and spent an itinerant childhood between Yemen and England. After several years in a boarding school in Cyprus, she finally settled in Canada in 1985. In high school, inspired partly by distorted media images of the Ethiopian famine, she began taking photographs. After studying film at Howard University in Washington, D.C., she went on to work as a freelance photographer for The Washington Post. Then in 2003, Aïda was chosen to be part of the groundbreaking show Ethiopian Passages : Dialogues in the Diaspora at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. Later that same year, she made an appearance on Imágenes Havana, a group photography exhibition in Havana, Cuba. Aïda’s work can be found in permanent collections of several museums in the United States. She is also the recipient of the European Union Prize for her work on Ethiopia in the 2007 7th Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie festival in Bamako, Mali.
Aïda’s photography has been published in The Washington Post, New House News Service, BBC, and The New York Times. A collection of her exhibited work is also in the book Ethiopian Passages :Contemporary Art from the Diaspora.
Source: Africalia
–
Ethiopia: Past /Forward, is the third edition in a new collection of photographic books, initiated by Africalia and dedicated to contemporary African photographers. Publisher: Africalia Editions / Roularta Books 2009. Available in bookstores or online at www.africalia.be
If you go:
Program of the launching – 16 September 2009 – 16.30h
Zuiderpershuis / Antwerpen
Wereldculturencentrum Zuiderpershuis
Waalse Kaai 14 – 2000 Antwerpen
www.zuiderpershuis.be
Aida it is a very wondefull job you are doing & i will say go forward.
God bless you & give my greetings to your mom which makes me very proud of you.
Congrats, Aida. I am indeed proud of you, your energy determination and unique talent for seeing some thing out of the ordinary and your ability to evoke our emotion in color or black and white. I share your need to document what seems to change before our eyes and what we now take for granted and yet will have the yearning when our memories fade. So, Aida keep doing what you are doing and be the inspiration and the reference to all of us but specifically to the generation of young girls who would follow your footsteps.
Wondimsh
Achamyeleh Debela
Aida,
Congratulation on the book! I have always loved your work since I was introduced to it at the Smithsonian show. Your images of Ethiopia creates nostalgia for me personally and transports me back to my childhood in Ethiopia. They invoke a sense of tenderness, care, respect and love for your culture and people. Keep up the good work. When are you launching the book in the U.S. and where can I purchase it?
Ke Talaq akbrot gar!
Martha
cool!
Aida
Congrats from A.A Ethiopia. Keep up the good work, I know there’s more to come. This is only the begining.
Good job!!!!!Aidi