Born and raised in the capital\u2019s central district of Merkato \u2014 near the landmark often referred to as Cinema Ras \u2014 Addis Ababa has long shaped the life and work of Eyob Kitaba. In this densely woven neighborhood, where the sound of worship drifts through crowded lanes and commerce continues deep into the night, he was born 47 years ago into a setting defined by constant motion.<\/p>\n
That atmosphere \u2014 restless, communal and unceasing \u2014 formed the backdrop of his early years and would later become a recurring subject in his art.<\/p>\n
From a young age, Eyob gravitated toward drawing and painting, developing an ambition to become a full-time visual artist. His work, he says, seeks to bridge generations, translating memories of earlier urban life into visual forms that resonate with contemporary audiences.<\/p>\n
He traces the origins of his practice to primary school. As a third-grade student, he began sketching scenes inspired by Ethiopian childhood traditions, including the seasonal gift-giving associated with Enkutatash. What began as an exercise in observation evolved into a sustained artistic inquiry. Today, his work examines the rhythms of urban life, where personal memory and the passage of time intersect in a visual language marked by movement and transition.<\/p>\n
Over the past two decades, Eyob has built a career as a full-time artist, mounting four solo exhibitions and participating in more than 15 group shows in Ethiopia and abroad. His latest exhibition, \u201cBeneath the Roof,\u201d opened on March 26, 2026, at the Gebre Kristos Desta Center, presenting more than 70 works.<\/p>\n
The collection ranges widely in scale, from intimate canvases measuring 30 by 40 centimeters to expansive mural-like compositions stretching up to 2 by 10 meters. Many of the works are created on corrugated iron \u2014 both reclaimed and newly sourced \u2014 underscoring the material realities of the city itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeneath the Roof\u201d draws on decades of observation, assembling visual narratives of shifting living conditions in the capital. Eyob\u2019s multidisciplinary approach \u2014 spanning painting, sculpture, photography, sound and installation \u2014 incorporates materials gathered from across the city, including metal sheets, architectural fragments and everyday objects. These elements are reconfigured into layered compositions that engage with memory, displacement and transformation.<\/p>\n
At the center of his practice is a sustained focus on the evolution of urban space. His work examines the tension between the city\u2019s past and its rapidly changing present, using architectural forms as both subject and metaphor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city is the true reflection of my life, as it is for many,\u201d he said. He described the exhibition as an attempt to register a sense of unease. \u201cToday, as I observe my surroundings, it feels as though people, objects and streets are being absorbed into a single, indistinct hue \u2014 unsettled by a turbulence of destruction and rebirth.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the pace of change in Addis Ababa prompted him to organize the exhibition as a way of engaging the public and recalling earlier forms of urban life.<\/p>\n
In response, many of the works incorporate corrugated metal sheets salvaged from construction sites and demolition areas, painted in muted greens and yellows to evoke altered landscapes. Earlier panels depict human figures embedded within processes of urban transformation, while installations feature objects recovered from dismantled homes \u2014 doors, brooms and fragments of furniture \u2014 arranged as material traces of displacement.<\/p>\n
Together, these elements form densely layered compositions, reflecting a city in flux and the fragments it leaves behind.<\/p>\n
Eyob, a lecturer at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, where he also coordinates the M.F.A. program and serves on the Academic Council, said the exhibition has drawn visitors who recognize the city\u2019s shifting landscape across different political and developmental eras. Many, he noted, are familiar with earlier state-led housing programs as well as redevelopment initiatives that accelerated after the 2005 Ethiopian general election.<\/p>\n
The works also reflect more recent forms of displacement, including relocations tied to corridor development projects that have moved residents from inner-city neighborhoods to the urban periphery.<\/p>\n
Eyob said the exhibition resonates across generations. Two of the pieces \u2014 constructed from corrugated iron and ceiling materials \u2014 are particularly personal, tracing his own sense of identity across time.<\/p>\n
\u201cChange is inevitable,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, the exhibition unfolds as a kind of passage, echoing the transformations of Addis Ababa itself. Within this gathering of remnants, one can sense both a marking of an ending and an invitation to engage with a form of nostalgia that is active and reflective, rather than merely sentimental.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, he argues, transformation should not come at the expense of memory. For Eyob, the possibility of renewal depends on acknowledging what came before.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is what I aim to convey in \u2018Beneath the Roof,\u2019\u201d he said, describing the exhibition as a meditation on continuity. Each roof, he added, shelters a distinct family history \u2014 lives shaped by successive waves of urban change. His works, composed of corrugated iron and ceiling fragments, stage a visual negotiation with modern development, allowing past and present to coexist within the same frame.<\/p>\n
For the exhibition\u2019s curator, Jermay Michael Gabriel, the project operates as what he described as a dispositif \u2014 an arrangement through which material memory is both organized and made visible. Central to this approach is Eyob\u2019s use of kornis<\/em>, a traditional ceiling framework that once defined the interiors of many Ethiopian homes.<\/p>\n Constructed by repeatedly layering plaster-soaked fabric, these ceilings created an intermediary space where dust accumulated over decades, alongside the traces of everyday life.<\/p>\n \u201cEyob\u2019s artistic practice emerges as an act of preservation and reactivation of memory,\u201d the curator said. \u201cHe rescues these ceiling frames from destruction brought about by rapid urban change, transforming them into aesthetic objects and historical witnesses that hold within them a quiet persistence against forgetting.\u201d<\/p>\n Jermay says that Eyob\u2019s role extends beyond that of a painter. He becomes, instead, a mediator between ruin and representation. Weathered plaster and rusted corrugated iron are treated as \u201cinvoluntary paintings,\u201d shaped over time by exposure, humidity and decay. By repositioning these fragments within the gallery, the exhibition resists simplified portrayals of African urban life, presenting instead a layered and evolving reality \u2014 one in which the ceiling above a child\u2019s bed can remain both a site of imagination and a silent record of transformation.<\/p>\n For Meron Getu, a fourth-year student at Addis Ababa University\u2019s Department of Business and Economics, the exhibition became something more personal: a reflection of her own experience of displacement.<\/p>\n Visiting the gallery on opening day, Meron Getu found herself standing before the towering corrugated panels, overcome by a sudden sense of recognition. The textures, layered and weathered, did not read to her as purely aesthetic decisions but as fragments of a city she felt was slipping out of reach \u2014 a city increasingly unrecognizable within the span of her own young adulthood.<\/p>\n Her response closely echoed the tensions at the center of Eyob\u2019s practice. While she acknowledged, as the artist does, that transformation is an inevitable feature of a growing city, she was struck by the scale of what is erased in the process. Moving through installations composed of salvaged doors and plaster ceiling frames, she described a sense of absence \u2014 the disappearance of familiar landmarks and lived spaces \u2014 that has made memory itself feel urgent, even resistant.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels as though the city I grew up in is being replaced by something I don\u2019t yet know,\u201d she said, reflecting a broader unease about how to locate the present without a stable sense of the past.<\/p>\n For Meron, the exhibition offered a rare site of reckoning \u2014 a space in which what Eyob has described as a \u201cnameless turbulence\u201d becomes legible. Discarded materials are not only preserved but reactivated, allowing a younger generation to navigate between childhood memory and an altered urban landscape.<\/p>\n Looking ahead, Eyob said he hopes to extend the life of the work beyond the gallery. His aim is to bridge public exhibition with academic practice, documenting projects across multiple media and integrating them into the education system. By doing so, he seeks to encourage emerging artists to draw from their immediate environments rather than looking outward for validation.<\/p>\n Focusing on local realities, he argued, offers a pathway to engaging broader human conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are a creator,\u201d he said, \u201cyou transform adversity into opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Born and raised in the capital\u2019s central district of Merkato \u2014 near the landmark often referred to as Cinema Ras \u2014 Addis Ababa has long shaped the life and work of Eyob Kitaba. 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