Tsedaye • ፀደይ • Studio

My 2019 light sculptures ‘Senait & Nahom | ሰናይት :: እና :: ናሆም | The Peacemaker & The Comforter‘ acquired by @smithsonian_africanart in 2021 for their permanent collection WILL BE ON VIEW IN ITS VERY OWN GALLERY STARTING DECEMBER 13th. I have named the entire gallery/installation: ‘Sanctuary :: መቅደስ :: Mekdes’. (Thank you @bahimisha for brainstorming with me on this) Thank you NMAfA team from 2019 til now: @kddumouchelle & @kemilbourne & Dana Moffett & Kevin Etherton & Janet Stanley and so many more, the @smithsonian institution, my studio team @aishanailah & @elizabethalamb and the countless people that had a hand in contributing to the life of this work, my practice and my kids🙏🏿. It’s surreal to be exhibiting at a museum that I grew up regularly going to on field trips and family outings. It really shaped who I am as a child of the African diaspora, an artist, researcher and cultural producer. More deets & images soon. RP @smithsonian_africanart Here’s a sneak peek at our newest exhibition “Tsedaye Makonnen—Sanctuary :: መቅደስ :: Mekdes,” opening Dec. 13. Featuring seven sculptures by D.C.-based Ethiopian American artist Tsedaye Makonnen ( @tsedaye ), it explores the invisibility and violence that Black women and their communities are often subjected to, finding connections in form and themes related to alternate depictions of the power of motherhood and sisterly solidarity. Makonnen’s seven light-tower sculptures at the center of the exhibition are made up of 50 boxes, each named after an individual lost to violence, enshrining their names with love as a form of comfort and solidarity, with a sense of hope for a different future. Makonnen envisioned the central installation in this exhibition while she was an artist in residence for the National Museum of African Art as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. The sculptures are in dialogue with artworks from across the Horn of Africa’s history drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. Plan your visit to be among the first to see the magnificent display. #NMAFA #SmithsonianAfricanArt Photographs by Brad Simpson, 2024 National Museum of African Art Smithsonian Institution

Now on permanent display @thewaltersartmuseum in the Medieval gallery, a new commission titled: "Sacred :: የተቀደሰ :: Yetekedse" Artist Statement - East African spiritual codes have spoken to me my entire life. They are indigenous to what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea, a region with deep reverence for and faith in the sacred, a culture that has taught me to see the divinity in all things. These structures are also inspired by the sacred architecture of places like Lalibäla and the monumental processional crosses that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church uses in ceremonies at these holy sites. These ethereal symbols resonate beyond the region and the religion not only because they are fractals and carry the imprint of the Universe within each design, but also because similar patterns exist across the African diaspora.  My research threads together spiritualities across borders and peoples, with a focus on East to West Africa and across the Black Atlantic. Having parents who migrated to the U.S. and birthed me here, my own Black identity has been shaped—and profoundly blessed—by the cultural practices, resistance legacies, and interpersonal generosity of Black Americans. As such, my work centers Black femmes and Trans and gender-nonbinary individuals, with a steady focus on Black people migrating across the Mexico-US border, the Darien Gap, the Middle East and North Africa, and the Black Mediterranean—this installation is no different.  My hope is that this installation provides Baltimore residents a space to reflect on the sacredness of all living beings, including themselves. May this space provide comfort, rest, refuge, and inspiration. May you find a sense of limitlessness, a moment of safety, and a gateway to Spirit (whatever and whoever that may be for you). May you walk away cleansed and carry a lifetime’s worth of protection and healing. Photos courtesy of @thewaltersartmuseum Dedications & Thank You's in the comments-

‘Africa and Byzantium’, curated by @dreaachi , closing today @metmuseum . It’s been so special to have my light sculptures & textiles installed next to ancient works that my pieces reference and are in constant conversation with. My work collapses time, it exists in the past, present and future. I hope to have the capacity soon to share more behind the scenes on this experience. For some etheric inspiration, look through my MetLiveArts stories to see some clips from my ‘Astral Sea’ performance from last Thursday with dream collaborators @adiascorner @aishanailah @alsarah5000 @jasminehearncollaborates .

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program Presented by @thirdspaceartfoundation In collaboration with @aavf and @ecc_italy Program Curator: @janinesytsma Curatorial Producer: @lehuntnouveau Program partners: @fca_ghana @NEWMEDIA @uarkart @uark.arthistory @ccalagos @theafricacenter Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Wednesday, May 6 Screening and Panel Discussion Waves of Ash: Navigating Liminal Waters and the Unfinished Archive Tsige Tafesse moderates a conversation with Tsedaye Makonnen and Jermay Michael Gabriel Cappellin on Waves of Ash. Together they consider burning as both destruction and transformation, and what it means to reread transmitted history through a critical gaze across layered memory and forced crossings. 📷: @francescabottazzin_ph @lordkubolsstudio Follow @thirdspaceartfoundation for more reflections on 1922 Revisited and announcements about future programs Additional information on the foundation and programs → #1922revisited #venicebiennale

Performance Thursday, May 7, 2026 4:30PM European Cultural Centre Giardini Marinaressa As part of 1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program during Venice Biennale opening week.

TOMORROW IN VENICE 💙 come see the East Africans at the Biennale🌪️ Thursday, May 7, 2026 4:30PM @ecc_italy GARDENS Giardini Marinaressa As part of @thirdspaceartfoundation & @aavforum ‘1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program’ during @labiennale opening week.

Tsedaye Studios is pleased to announce The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s @nelsonatkins recent acquisition of her following works:  Astral Sea IV (2020) Aberash | አበራሽ | You Give Light II (2023, fabrication support by @friendly_metals )  Nefsé Nets’a Mawt’at Däbtäras | ነፍስን :ነፃ :ማውጣት ::ደብተራ :: | The Soul Is Set Free Magic Scrolls I & IV (2023, fabrication support by @drhannsewjo & @efa.rbpmw )  Thank you so much to curator @rachelkabukala , agent @elizabethalamb , and the Atkins museum staff who spent months supporting this acquisition, and gratitude always to Tsedaye’s family, friends, collaborators & colleagues who make her practice possible (plus @dreaachi for including 3 out of the 4 works featured in her ‘Africa & Byzantium’ exhibition at @metmuseum 2023-2024). For further information on the works, please see the museum’s collection link in bio🔗.  Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund

As I return to Venice, I am reflecting on one of my favorite writers and humans @maazamengiste reflecting on my textile and performance series Astral Sea that began in Venice in 2019. To my surprise and deep honor, I ran into Maaza and @drcacayne , both East African icons, discussing my work during the 2023 exhibition SIGHTLINES curated by Drew Thompson and @ad__wo . The YouTube link of their discussion is in my bio🔗. These are the affirmations that keep me going, that remind me I’m on my path, that make me proud of the legacy and world I am building for my own and all children. Also thank you to @unexfemmenoire and @ad__wo for sharing their interpretations of my work in this beautifully designed book🙏🏿 Excerpt from @maazamengiste essay for the SIGHTLINES exhibition book: “….Beyond you, through the glass, past the reflections of light and sources of prayer, ‘Astral Sea’ by Tsedaye Makonnen. An act of resistance and a commemoration. A garment she wears like a shroud, like a protection, as she places herself in front of structures of power. Tsedaye: Spring, a season of new life, new growths encouraged by rains, by water. Once, on the shore’s edge, I watched a boat approach. What descended onto solid Earth were rows and rows of tired, hungry people speaking their names as affirmations: I am here. I am no longer there. In the wake of that arrival, other boats, other visions of hope. Bodies crossing other bodies that found their final rest between the waves. ‘I am here. I am not here.’ they say. Those names that no longer have their bodies, they linger in that space this is refuge for all those who never return, and never arrive, invisible constellations buried in the Mediterranean, reflecting light against the stars. No longer victims. No longer tragedy. No longer seeking another place to call home. They have made their own safe passage an Astral Sea. What I mean to say to you is this: I remember all that I have not seen. It is possible to love what you can no longer touch. This is not an object. This is not art. This moves in that space of freedom and thought. This moves free.”

1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program unfolds across Venice as a series of live performances, a screening, and a panel discussion staged at Hotel Monaco, the European Cultural Centre’s Marinaressa Gardens, and other sites throughout the city. Next: Tsedaye Makonnen and Jermay Michael Gabriel’s Waves of Ash This performance links Tsedaye Makonnen’s and Jermay Michael Gabriel’s artistic practices, migration, the archive of memory, and the deviation of Western epistemology. Their work takes the form of an installation composed of burned wood and textiles. Engaged in the collection of objects such as pieces of wood found in the lagoon and presented in the form of a conical structure, the act of burning, understood as both destruction and transformation, raises a fundamental question for Western epistemology: to what extent are we willing to accept history as it is transmitted to us, without exercising a critical gaze? Tsedaye’s blue textiles bring the discourse of the lagoon/sea back to the center as a liminal space of passage and stratified memory: a site where the Mediterranean and the Atlantic symbolically converge, evoking the history of Black, African, and Afro-descendant peoples, marked by migration, forced crossings, and suppressed narratives. The work ultimately converges on a single question: should history be destroyed or preserved? Or rather, should it be approached from a critical perspective, deconstructed, and rewritten from its margins? @aavforum @NEWMEDIA @ccalagos @uark.arthistory @ecc_italy @fca_ghana @theafricacenter Follow for more performance announcements Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Full program including new “at a glance” section → REGISTER FOR UPDATES → /event/escape-the-boxes/

As part of 1922 Revisited: Live Arts Program during Venice Biennale opening week: Live conversation Wednesday, May 6, 2026 8:45–9:30AM Hotel Monaco, Sala Corte, Venice Performance Thursday, May 7, 2026 4:30PM European Cultural Centre Giardini Marinaressa Waves of Ash: Navigating Liminal Waters and the Unfinished Archive brings Tsedaye Makonnen, Jermay Michael Gabriel, and Tsige Tafesse into conversation around memory, migration, ash, water, transformation, and the histories carried across bodies, materials, and forced crossings. The live conversation takes place on Wednesday morning at Hotel Monaco, Sala Corte, with Tsige moderating a dialogue with Tsedaye and Jermay on the layered questions held within Waves of Ash. The following day, Tsedaye and Jermay will present the Waves of Ash performance at the European Cultural Centre, Giardini Marinaressa, extending these questions through live, embodied, and material practice. Presented by Third Space Art Foundation, curated by Dr. Janine Sytsma, in collaboration with the African Art in Venice Forum and the European Cultural Centre. If you’re in Venice next week, we would love to see you there. Swipe for more info, and please come see the work. And we heard there will be snacks and coffee at the morning conversation, so breakfast on us lol

Meet the 1922 Revisited Artists! Next Up: Tsedaye Makkonnen Tsedaye Makonnen is an interdisciplinary artist-curator whose work spans across performance, sculpture, textile, installation, and film. Born in Washington, D.C., to Ethiopian immigrants, she draws on her East African heritage, Black feminist theory, diasporic knowledge systems and spiritual technologies, birthwork and migration studies to create works that center social justice and foster greater global equity. Closely connected to, yet distinct from, her sculptural work, Makonnen’s performance practice has received international recognition. In 2019, as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, she staged When Drowning Is the Best Option at the Venice Biennale, a performance addressing global migration and displacement, honoring Black life. She returned in 2022 as part of Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a global Black woman convening organized in conjunction with Simone Leigh’s U.S. Pavilion, contributing a multimedia performance that centered Blackness across bodies of water and borders while exploring care, freedom, and diasporic world-making. Her installations have also been included in major museum exhibitions in the United States, including Africa and Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ethiopia at the Crossroads at the Walters Art Museum. She currently has a solo exhibition titled Sanctuary :: መቅደስ :: Mekdes at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Follow for more artist features Venice Biennale | May 5–9 Full program →

Daughters of Desta is an artist collective of five Ethiopian and Eritrean American women: a writer, a pair of interdisciplinary artist-researchers, a filmmaker, and a film producer. They are working together to fill the gaps within the archive of Ethiopian and Eritrean stories, particularly in the DC area. They came to us with was a desire to do the internal work first. Before the grant applications, online presence, projects, or any outputs, they wanted to align as a collective. To understand each other’s strengths and creative instincts. To build a shared foundation. Over two days, we facilitated a hybrid in-person and virtual retreat designed specifically for Daughters of Desta. We built the environment from the ground up: the aromatherapy blend diffused throughout the space, the herbal tea we brewed and offered, the catered breakfast and lunch, and the playlist. We opened each day with a somatic exercise. We shaped every prompt and the daily itinerary with intention. Because the conditions you create for the work are as much a part of the work as anything else. We are so grateful to Daughters of Desta for trusting us with their vision and process. It was a dream first-client experience. This retreat reflects one of the services we offer at Viridian House: workshops and group programming designed for collectives, teams, and organizations ready to do the foundational work together. If any of this is what you or your collective needs, we’d love to work with you. 💌 email us at [email protected] 📸 photos by @sennaahmad #daughtersofdesta #viridianhouse