Tiemar Tegene and Engdaye Lemma: We Belong to Time: Circle Art Gallery
Tiemar’s works move with the unpredictability of feeling - love, regret, and memory shifting like weather - while Engdaye’s prints echo the city’s restless pulse, its constant becoming. Together, their practices reveal time not as something we possess, but something that possesses us: each impression, each trace, a reminder that creation itself is a record of time passing through matter.
Engdaye Lemma’s experimental printmaking practice weaves together screen-printing, painting, and collage to explore the intersections of life and culture. Drawing on ethnographic ideas, his work examines the textures of society while highlighting art’s capacity to bridge knowledge and lived experience.
In our last show of the year, we are delighted to present the work of Engdaye Lemma (Ethiopian, b. 1980) alongside Tiemar Tegene (Ethiopian, b. 1994), in a dual exhibition titled We Belong to Time. Tegene is no stranger to Circle, having held her acclaimed debut solo exhibition Shertan Weha here in 2023 and Lemma participated in our very successful group exhibition, Addis Contemporary ll in 2021.
In We Belong to Time, printmaking becomes a language of transformation. Through transfer, layering, and pigment, Tiemar Tegene and Engdaye Lemma trace the ways emotion and experience leave their marks.
Tegene’s works move with the unpredictability of feeling - love, regret, and memory shifting like weather - while Engdaye’s prints echo the city’s restless pulse, its constant becoming. Together, their practices reveal time not as something we possess, but something that possesses us: each impression, each trace, a reminder that creation itself is a record of time passing through matter.
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 she 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.
Lemma’s experimental printmaking practice weaves together screen-printing, painting, and collage to explore the intersections of life and culture. Drawing on ethnographic ideas, his work examines the textures of society while highlighting art’s capacity to bridge knowledge and lived experience.
Tiemar Tegene (Ethiopian, b. 1994)
Lives and works in Addis Ababa
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 exhibitions include 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) and the very successful Shertan Weha, Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi (2023), as well as a series of public murals commissioned in the city of Addis Ababa.
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), Art Rotterdam (2025) and the Cape Town Art Fair (2024).
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.
Engdaye Lemma (Ethiopian, b. 1980)
Lives and works in Addis Ababa
Engdaye Lemma was born and raised in Desse City, Ethiopia. His interest in visual art was cultivated at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design where he received his Bachelors of Fine Arts and was part of the school’s first print-making cohort. Lemma now teaches at the School of Fine Arts and collaborates with several of his former teachers.
Lemma’s experimental print-making practice synthesises screen-printing, painting and collage media. Exploring the multiple ways in which life and culture intertwine, his works are rigorous interrogations of the textures of society. He is inspired by ethnography whilst also taking seriously art’s power to bridge the gap between knowledge and lived experience.
Lemma, who lives and works in Addis Ababa, takes as his subject city life. He often reflects on the ways in which public space and private space overlap in urban environments. The visual density of his works speaks to the everyday chaos of life in the city: the rapid pace of change and movement, the blurred boundaries of individuality and collectivity, the clashing yet rhythmic sounds and the sudden leftover objects and marks. Ultimately, Lemma reflects on society and humanity, as he himself, always present in his work, navigates life, meaning and existence.
Select solo and dual exhibitions include; Floating Souls, Addis Fine Art, London, UK (2024); and LET’S AGREE TO DISAGREE, Christine X Art Gallery, Sliema, Malta (2023). Group exhibitions include Connected Threads, Addis Fine Art, NADA Space, New York, USA (2024); Eastern Voices: Contemporary Artists from East Africa, Addis Fine Art, London, UK (2023); and Expansive Corridor, Modern Art Museum Gebre Kristos Desta Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2022). He has also participated in major art fairs such as Liste Art Fair with Addis Fine Art, Basel, Switzerland (2025) and 1-54 Contemporary Art Fair London with Addis Fine Art (2024).
