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Ethiopian Pavillion
The Ethiopia Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia presents “Shapes of Silence”, an exhibition by Tegene Kunbi (b. 1980, Addis Ababa), curated by Abebaw Ayalew, open to the public from May 9 to November 22, 2026, in the prestigious setting of Palazzo Bollani.
Representing the culmination of Kunbi’s thirty years of studio practice, “Shapes of Silence” explores silence as a social and political condition through a new series of works that mobilizes abstraction, textiles, and assemblage. Working with painting as a layered material archive, the artist approaches silence not as absence, but as a charged space shaped by cultural expectation and material history.
Silence as a social practice in Ethiopia often draws its justification from the country’s rich folkloric traditions. Within these traditions, silence holds an ambivalent and paradoxical status, praised as a virtue while simultaneously regarded as a potential misdeed.
In Tegene Kunbi’s work, the political enters through material choice: his practice invites these asymmetries into the pictorial field. His paintings bring together textiles of starkly contrasting provenance and significance, hand-knitted fabrics made by his mother alongside industrial textiles produced for African markets; sacred garments used in religious contexts alongside utilitarian materials designed for mattresses. Drawing on Ethiopia’s cultural diversity, once described by Carlo Conti Rossini as a “museum of peoples”, Kunbi also incorporates weaving traditions from different regions, where clothing and costume have historically marked cultural and political autonomy, forcing these distinct practices into a shared visual field. Each material carries specific histories of labor, belief, and political positioning. When assembled on the pictorial surface, these categories fracture, and painting becomes a site where socially and culturally segregated materials are compelled into proximity and renegotiation.
Promoted by the Ethiopian Ministry of Tourism in collaboration with the Embassy of Ethiopia in Italy, “Shapes of Silence” marks the country’s second participation at La Biennale di Venezia, following its debut in 2024, underscoring Ethiopia’s commitment to promoting contemporary art and international cultural dialogue.
The exhibition is also made possible with the support of Primo Marella Gallery, an art gallery based in Milan and Lugano that represents the artist.