Tiemar Tegene’s works are anchored in her training as a printmaker, expanding etching processes into monoprinting through spontaneous experiments, most often using household items and their textures. Rather than producing numbered editions struck from the same plate, each work falls outside of fixed description as Tegene finds new ways to press the texture of an image through the application of ink onto the page. Additions of coloured pencil forge repeating icons and patterns, becoming increasingly abstracted whilst adding layers of personal narratives.
Channelling an intimate and complex response to the world around her, Tegene’s compositions are transmutations of her emotional experiences and the nature of her relationships with others. Inside these images live the details and echoes of larger stories, whether relayed in confidence by a friend, overheard on the street, or drawn from song lyrics or film. Consolidating ‘real’ details with flourishes of reference and imagination, her portraiture reaches for specific and consuming emotional moments, that ripple through the body and space.
Tegene received a BFA in Printmaking from the Allé School of Fine Arts & Design in Addis Ababa.
Solo and dual exhibitions include We Belong to Time, Circle Art Gallery (2025), Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Whose the Darkest of them All? , AKINCI Gallery in Amsterdam (2025) , Questioned and Assured Existence, Modern Art Museum Gebre Kristos Desta Center in Addis Ababa (2025), Memories from that Night, Gallery Dotwalk in Delhi NCR, (2024), Shertan Weha, Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi (2023).
Group exhibitions include Lets Agree to Disagree Christine X Art Gallery, Malta (2023); Gathering at Dawn Mitochondria Gallery, Houston (2024); the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (2022); and James Fuentes Art Gallery, New York (2022). Tegene has exhibited in various international art fairs such as 1-54 Contemporary Art Fair London (2023 & 2025), Africa Basel (2025), Cape Town Art Fair (2024) and Art Rotterdam (2025). In 2026 she will be showing at Expo Chicago Art Fair with Circle Art Gallery.
Tegene’s work is in various collections, including the Foundation Gandur pour l’Art in Geneva, the IIZIKO National Gallery South Africa, Africa First Collection, Kamita Art Collection, Schwartzman and Associates Collection and The African Arts Trust Collection.
