Using voice as an instrument and the body as a vessel for movement, I explore the ontological condition of the oppressed - from grief and anguish to joy and imagination.
In visual works, I dismantle the forms of wood and steel, aiming to untether The African Continent from the west. I connect clay bodies with wire to contextualize the dispossession of self occurring to African people in relationship to power.
Addressing the ecological, I build using dirt and manipulate pigments symbolically as a way to permeate contemporary worlds with pre-colonial wisdoms. I oscillate between the materiality of found objects and natural resources to examine what is inherited through traditions and social systems. I consider imagination, memory, and oral story-telling as archive, embedding in my work the tangibility of a new world informed by the past.
In visual works, I dismantle the forms of wood and steel, aiming to untether The African Continent from the west. I connect clay bodies with wire to contextualize the dispossession of self occurring to African people in relationship to power.
Addressing the ecological, I build using dirt and manipulate pigments symbolically as a way to permeate contemporary worlds with pre-colonial wisdoms. I oscillate between the materiality of found objects and natural resources to examine what is inherited through traditions and social systems. I consider imagination, memory, and oral story-telling as archive, embedding in my work the tangibility of a new world informed by the past.
Billion Tekleab (b. 2000, Houston, Texas) is an Eritrean-American interdisciplinary artist. Tekleab’s practice is generated from contrasting personal narratives from Eritrea with histories existing in various Black Gulf-coastal communities. Across hemispheres, Tekleab marries art with communal relationships rooted in the intersectionality of shared Black diasporic experiences. Tekleab holds a B.S. in Integrated Studies of Art, Design and African American History. Her works have been presented with Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Project Row Houses, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Nameless Sound, and The Anderson Center For The Arts.
Image:
Artist Headshot
Image:
Artist Headshot