Tsedaye Makonnen

Tsedaye Makonnen’s multimedia works are rooted in ritual, ceremony, remembrance, and memorialization. Her light monuments create space to reflect upon and honor such moments of profound loss. Makonnen grapples with the long history of the dehumanization of Black women and their communities through processes which normalize their premature death. This body of work, in the afterlife of slavery, knowing horrors of a global capitalism built from the limited life and expedient death of Black women harkens to the inquiry of scholars Christina Sharpe, Kimberle Crenshaw, Igiaba Scebo and more. Her light sculptures, a series of towers of varying heights, titled ‘Senait & Nahom: The Peacemaker & The Comforter’, is an homage, a wake, a testament. 

The individual 50 light boxes (that are stacked to create the monuments) are named after 50 Black femmes that include Aiyana Stanley-Jones who was murdered by police in Detroit, Michigan at the age of seven, her name means ‘beautiful flower, eternal blossom, a good path and divine spirit’. Then each light cube alternates between womxn, such as Senait Tadesse, a 19 year old Eritrean woman who strangled her baby Nahom and hanged herself in Eckolstädt asylum centre on April 20, 2018; reminiscent of Margaret Garner, the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s award winning novel Beloved, who killed her daughter rather than allowing the child to be returned to slavery in 1856 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Ethiopian Coptic Crosses are laser-cut into the stacked faces which make up the towers. These Coptic codes symbolize protection and healing, the light casts shadows of their patterns onto surfaces and people. The mirror offers time to reflect and allows the viewer a chance to see themselves in these womxn. 

As an extension of this work on forced migration and state-sanctioned violence, she has started a series titled ‘Astral Sea’ which are textile works that she attaches 100s of laser cut mirror pieces from the light sculptures on to fabric. These laser cut mirror pieces are the negative space of the Coptic crosses and the negative space of the womxn each lightbox represents. Makonnen has used Astral Sea 1, 2 & 3 in several performances to activate the objects and embody & honor the women who are memorialized in her work. These textiles represent water to her and the mirror pieces represent the bodies that have drowned at sea and exist in the wake of the Black Atlantic & the Black Mediterranean.

All images courtesy of the artist.

Tsedaye Makonnen’s Website

Tsedaye Makonnen’s Instagram