Kerima Ahmed: Surreal Life

Addis Fine Art gallery presents ‘Surreal Life’, a solo exhibition of works by emerging female painter Kerima Ahmed.

In this series of works, Ahmed has focused on collective human experiences, transposing and translating them using her captivating and distinctive abstract visual language. She specialises in compelling surreal and highly stylised scenes of everyday life. Ahmed simultaneously pays tribute to the formal, and dynamically challenges its expressive possibilities, using elements of traditional Ethiopian painting – bold outlines, geometric shapes and a selective earthy palette – to construct rhythmically appealing compositions. In works such as Melody I and Untitled III the influence of music and poetry are apparent in her works. These demonstrate what she calls ‘a visual music with its own coherence and flow’. The collection as a whole, but especially works featuring single figures (Nightmare I or Untitled XIII) encourage us to look beyond place and space, and to submit to an exploration of human feelings and emotion.

Kerima Ahmed was born in Addis Ababa in 1978, and graduated from the Addis Ababa University, Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in 2002. She is a founding member of Addis Ababa’s Nubia Visual Art Studio and currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Her recent solo exhibitions include: Columbia City Gallery, Seattle (2013), C Art Gallery, Seattle (2012), Norm Maxwell Studio Gallery, Los Angeles (2011) and Arthur Rimbaud Museum, Harar (2005, 2006). Group showings include: Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi (2015), LeLa Art Gallery, Addis Ababa (2014), Art of Ethiopia, Sheraton Addis, Addis Ababa (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa (2007, 2013), amongst others across Djibouti, Uganda, Sudan, the Netherlands, Austria and France.

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