Girmachew Getnet Colors of the Wind

Hi Girmachew, we are so happy to welcome you back to CFHILL! We had the honor of showing your work as part of a group show in 2021 curated by Rakeb Sile and Mesai Haileleul of Addis Fine Art along with other artists from the Horn of Africa.

— First of all, I would like to thank CFHILL and the entire team for providing me with this beautiful gallery space to show my latest artworks. Both my group show and my solo show with Addis Fine Art were very successful! When I presented my solo exhibition with them last September, I felt like I was at home. The atmosphere, the whole team and the exhibition were so nice, I experienced how to have a good time while working with the right people at the right time. I would like to thank the whole AFA team for building the bridge to CFHILL and I am sure we will have more great activities in the future. 

What led you to becoming an artist?

— Two things drove me to become an artist: questions and imaginations. One is a question that I asked myself when I was young: what is NOW? It’s a beautiful philosophical question. So, I slowly began to understand my artistic talent and decided to use art to answer all my questions and proclaim my will to go far and wide as a free human creature with my imagination. 

After graduating from the Addis Ababa Fine Arts and Design School, you founded the Habesha Art Studio. Could you tell us more about the studio and the ideas behind it?

— The establishment of Habesha Art Studio and the idea behind it is very interesting, it is a historical bright spot for the modern Ethiopian art scene.

I was just a third-year art student at the Addis Ababa Fine Arts and Design School when a great revolution led by university students against the government broke out. Many protesters were shot, injured, and arrested. Following the chaos, our university closed indefinitely. Many of us had spent hours and hours practicing and making art in the school studio. When the government announced a state of emergency, we stayed home – away from our artworks. 

At home, I used to spend a lot of time in my room thinking about how artists have to be free and neutral from all political or religious ties. I believed that the artist has to be an observer to document the truth. That’s when the idea of opening a studio first struck me. I started by drafting my idea for a studio on pieces of paper here and there, I planned to include all dedicated young artists as studio members with the chance to pursue art as freelance artists after graduation. Back then, there wasn’t much art infrastructure in Ethiopia except for the art school in Addis Ababa. It was a very special time to be in art school, as we had several Ethiopian art teachers with MA degrees from various art schools abroad, mostly from Russia and some from Germany. Aside from our teachers, we were also inspired by senior students’ works and art exhibitions at the German and French cultural institutes that played a big role in the art sector. The limitation to the art life changed with the foundation of the Habesha Art Studio; the first of its kind in Addis Ababa to assist artists by creating the right environment they need to create their art and express themselves.

Where do you find the inspiration for your works? What does your creative process look like?

— I find inspiration in us humans, nature and the universe. I turn to different works of art, music, spiritual books, books about the history of mankind, happy and positive people, walks in the forest to better understand the meaning of life, so that I can better define it through my art. I am in my studio almost every day, but that doesn’t mean that I create artworks every day. Sometimes I only imagine, sometimes I read books, especially old spiritual documents and philosophy books. I listen to documentaries that are interesting for my art series or ideas... The other part of my process is when I know what I want to paint before I start – I have the idea in my head, and then when I am completely ready, I start to work. The more I create, the more I learn about myself, the more I accept and love the person I have become.

The works in this exhibition are painted on canvas, but you have also previously painted on art-cardboard, and parts of the support are left unpainted. How do you work with these different supports?

— Yes, I worked on brown cardboard for many years. I love this material for combinations of drawings and paintings, and from 2020 I started to look for the same colored canvas material for large format artworks, and I started to work on high quality linen canvas. This became very successful and took my artistic career many steps further. The support of these two materials is a little different, but from the artist’s point of view, both have the same result and values.

Your works are quite large, how do you approach this scale and make them? Is it a physical process?

— For me, it’s pretty good to work on large scale artwork, I’ve had this experience for many years. I have a big studio with a very large wall, so I stretch it on the wall and work on it. Of course, you need physical strength and also mental techniques to do all the processes. I plan to create more large scale artworks in collaboration with some international art museums in near future. 

The series and the exhibition are called Colors of the Wind. What themes and symbolism do the works explore?

— Colors of the Wind is about the beautiful language between my blossoming mind, creativity and the incessant search for the questions and answers between me and the universe, the strong winds of conversation and movement in the colorful mind. The extremely free will to know the unknown by asking many profound questions about everything. To go higher and faster like a colored light to give the spirit the longed-for answer. In general, the artworks of Colors of the Wind proclaim the freedom of the human mind, spirit and thoughts to travel as far as the mind allows, to ask and answer in search of the truth, to find the pure answer from nature, from the deepest part of the spirit, everything that is written there. This is a very interesting journey that I am experiencing through my art to go deeper and deeper into my innermost being where all the truth is buried.  Not all questions are answered, but the main thing is to ask in order to be fulfilled.  

What ideas and motifs do you regularly revisit?

— My artistic influences range from African cave art, architecture and sculpture to Egyptian murals, classical Roman and Greek art, architecture through Renaissance to modern figurative and contemporary artists. These are my influences because that is where human art history lies. I believe that I am a part of that history influenced by others and that I influence others as well.

The works have both strong figures and abstract elements. Who are the people in the paintings and how do the strokes of color relate to them?

— The person in my paintings is usually a self-portrait/self-character and sometimes other models. It’s about a visual color language, I only decide what color to paint once I am in the middle of the process, the spirit forces itself on me! When two images confront each other in a work of art, or reciprocate, it signifies a confrontation with one’s own self.