MODERNIST ART IN ETHIOPIA

337pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Athens, 2019

Winner of the 2020 African Studies Association Bethwell A. Ogot Prize for best book on East African studies.

“Giorgis has assembled the archive of Ethiopian modernism that she brilliantly critiques. With deep personal knowledge, she takes us from magical healing scrolls to miniskirts, from monarchy to socialist tyranny, from Paris to Oklahoma. The details are fascinating and the artists’ works themselves extraordinary, but the real revelation is Giorgis’ understanding of the politico-cultural cross currents that converged in Ethiopia. Her presentation of them with an unflinchingly critical eye does more to celebrate Ethiopia’s singular achievements than any narrowly national story could provide.” Susan Buck-Morss, author of Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History

“[This] volume places Ethiopia in a rich pan-African context by evoking how the arts, both visual and literary, can elucidate one country’s intellectual, political, and social history.” Dominique Coulet du Gard, African Studies Review

Elizabeth W. Giorgis is the former Director of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and Dean of the College of Performing and Visual Art of Addis Ababa University. She is currently Associate Professor of critical theory and criticism as well as art history at the College of Performing and Visual Art and the Center of African Studies at Addis Ababa University.