Tesfaye Urgessa On The Politics Of Art, Emotions And Freedom

Here at Vogue, we love emotive art. Vibrant and soul-tinged, Tesfaye Urgessa is the pinnacle of what it means to be a politically-conscious lover of contemporary culture, but in the purest sense of the word. The artist combines a unique Abstract approach, culminating in a bright display of texture and rebelliousness.

Since graduating at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in 2006, Urgessa—born in Ethiopia, now based in Germany—has quickly made his mark in the industry. Portraying both the “light and dark sides” of human existence, he represents the unspoken complexities of politics and identity. Vibrantly ingrained in his work—see No Country For Young Men, 2021, oil on canvas—is a sense of her vigorous search for something of meaning in an increasingly erratic and ever-flustered world.

Sharing an ethos with a plethora of allusions, which comprises the likes of Ethiopian iconography, German Neo-expressionism and a deep fascination for figurative painting techniques, it features real characters from the artist’s journey. All in all, his work depicts a hectic blend of bold shapes and traditional painting skills. Moreover, the classical figurations within her portrayal of bodies convey a distorted psychological tension that showcase domestic settings. What’s more, the subjects recall entwined representations of ethnic minorities and the politics of identity to create a narrative that runs through the seams of his practice. (As seen in his recent series No Country For Young Men, Urgessa is apt at reconstructing the symbolism behind his stories).

Uniting biblical references of his African roots and characters with the modern lens of Freudian expression, we speak to the artist at his London exhibit to discuss the meaningful depths of rawness, identity and belonging.

Abstraction has been a long-lasting crux of contemporary culture: politics aside, it’s spanned across decades of Art Movements and societal shifts. You interweave political and fine art influences to create your pieces. What aspects do you incorporate and what specifically do you appreciate in Abstract art?

One can find abstraction in every work of art even though the degree varies, from photography to a completely non-representational way of art making. As a painter I use a two-dimensional surface to create my images which is a much more reduced form of reality and can only be communicated through one of our senses: the eye.  However, in actual reality there are also other elements involved, captured by more or all of our senses which capture the perception of the situation as a whole. There is movement of things: sound, smell, time and so on, which you cannot bring to your canvas. Abstraction for me is a way of compensating all the missing elements in a painting by pushing the visual character of those recognisable objects and figures beyond their naturally known appearances. For example, by changing or exaggerating their size, scale or colour. I do this by eliminating certain parts or juxtaposing them and disrupting the perspective and space we think they should normally inhabit. It was a slow process to bring my works to where they are now. 

At the start of your career, who and what were the biggest influences?

It is very hard to mention a single person or a thing. It is rather more an involvement of many practitioners in the area. It began from my elder brother Asrat Geleta Urgessa, who in my youth, I learned how to draw from; continuing to professors at the Ale school of fine arts and Design, Addis Ababa like Mezgebu Tessema, Bisrat Shibabaw and Tadesse Mesfin whom I learnt to paint from. My professor at Staatliche Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, Cordula Güdemann, taught me about social activism as well as painting. I felt there was a lot to learn from them because they could do what I sought to do, and so they influenced me a great deal throughout my development.

What are your thoughts on using art for social activism?

Art can do a lot for social activism, by this I mean all forms of the arts including theatre, music, film and performance and so on. I believe the reason for that is they play on our emotions. The arts can change our state of mind and consciousness instantly more than anything else. They can aid you through a hard time, when you feel hopeless and weak the arts give you back your purpose and strength. They are the innate and oldest communication form for human beings, we could draw, dance and sing, long before we learnt to speak and write. 

Having moved from Ethiopia to Germany, could you argue that such a transition influenced your craft?

Yes, I think so. When I was studying in Ethiopia we studied anatomy, colour theory and composition in a very classical, academic way. There was a certain clear direction in that kind of study structure. When I came to Germany there was a huge space to try new things, you were expected to experiment with new material, techniques and so on. Unlike Ethiopia, there are many galleries and museums you can visit any time for reference to what has been done in the past and what is being done in the present. All that together with the maturity that comes through getting older made my way clear and focused my energy to what is most important for me as a painter.

Moving on to your latest exhibit, your approach goes from illustrative to more abstract. As you’ve often recalled, your works acquire a “multicultural gaze” that imbues a multiplicity of references (Ethiopian iconography, German Neo-expressionism from the 1980s and figurative strokes). Could you tell us more about this body of work and how it intersects with contemporary culture and society at large?

Until my youth I was basically drawing and painting pictures of the local Saints and Saints from the Bible with the touch of what we call ‘Ethiopian Traditional Art’ or ‘Ethiopian Church Painting’ as most of my contemporaries and the generation before us painted these icons. At that time, this was the only way I knew how to paint.  It didn't occur to me until my older brother, Asrat Geleta Urgessa joined the Ale School of Fine Arts and Design and brought home what he had been doing in school, that I realised there was an infinite style and direction in painting. Whilst studying, I completely left the way I used to draw and followed the school's academic study and style of painting the human figure, colour and composition. It was only after I came to Germany that I started to see my figures taking that iconic character of my earlier works which I used to do before I started to study. The figures became more frontal, looking directly at the viewer, somehow rigid and very present, like the pictures of Saints do. It was around this time that I re-discovered Lucian Freud whose work I knew of when I was still in Ethiopia but didn’t have very much connection and feeling to. What I loved most about Lucian Freud's works was the amount of attention that his figures are given and how intense their presence is. I also love the freedom of the Expressionists and Neo- Expressionists which gave so much flexibility to my practice - to work as intensively as possible and at the same time to have the possibility to change anything at any given time and not to be bound by anything but the painting itself.

In a nutshell, what did you want people to take away from it?

To engage with and experience what they feel before they get too busy by looking for a narrative within the work.

You also talk about the classical figurations of how bodies create a “distorted, psychological tension” hidden in domestic settings. What urged you to explore such aspects in your work?

Emotions change our physical make-up, from a slight facial muscle structure to a whole anatomical deformation, so by the law of reversibility a slight change in the structure of human anatomy can project a particular emotion at a particular time. In a painting you can intensify that by using colour and overall composition of the work. I believe this enables me to transmit emotion without the necessity of telling a coherent story. We as a human being mirror the emotions of a person in front of us to a greater degree. My trial is to let my figures mirror my emotion and later see if the viewer mirrors the figures on my paintings. It is as simple as that even though the work is a lot more complicated than that. 

On another note, you talk about intersectionality in race, politics and identity. Could you expand on your take?

The topics of racism, class, police brutality, injustice in politics and power etc are the cause of tremendous frustration, not only for me but also for the majority of the human race. Even though most of my paintings are created out of frustration and helplessness related to these factors, I never planned to use them for a particular purpose. At the same time, I know they are going to take the shape of my predominant thoughts and feelings at that particular time. I try to give an honest recognition to the images that I carry in my head which are nothing but an extraction of what is happening around me and the world, without any specific coherency. Some images come from my own experience and others from the experience of others. Generally, I am sensitive to the impact of injustice of any kind, and to the fragility of the human being. I think a lot about people who are especially legally abused and being legally abused all over the world because of the difference of their external appearances, beliefs and origins. Hearing, watching and thinking about them, together with my own experiences, form images in my head. Some images disappear as fast as they came but some stay longer or become more vivid. These images get a place on the surface of my canvases. I will be fundamentally affected by them and so will my paintings.

You’ve already got plenty of other works under your belt: what’s been a particular highlight?

Discovering the phrase ‘finishing a painting’, especially in my practise, to be a totally useless thing, was a huge thing for me. I don’t know if this can be counted as a highlight, but it definitely belongs to one of my best discoveries. Not pushing the paintings to a ‘finishing line’, because it doesn’t exist anymore, allowed me to see a whole new chapter of endless possibilities to paint. 

Available at SAATCHI YATES, the exhibit runs until August 25, 2021.