Image: courtesy of the artist
Biography
Billion Tekleab (b. 2000, Houston, TX) is an Eritrean-American artist based in Chicago, IL. She makes from a total Black female ontology and its abjectness, transgressiveness and social order of the sub/non/human, between imminent hope and imminent fear, un-archiving myth and subverting architectures of power in prose, film, sound, and sculpture.
"My artistic practice is rooted in my understanding of the Global South—where the Gulf South of Houston is geopolitically connected to the Horn of Africa by sedimentary rock. Ever responsive to the social and political conditions faced by Global Southerners, my work is an ongoing attempt to imagine possibilities for liberation. Through sculpture and performance, I create worlds of circumstance that explore themes of de-coloniality, borderlessness, Afrofuturism, Black female subjectivity, personhood, and the politics of rebellion, informed by a myth that I am curious about. With performance, I use both sonic and physical elements as instrument - articulating love, and a guttural, thrashing rage. In sculpture, I work with rigidity of steel and porosity of clay, making compositions out of space and forcing the material into desolate glimmers." - Tekleab, 2025
Tekleab is currently practicing as a Sculpture MFA 2027 candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a bachelors in the Interdisciplinary Studies of Art, Science, and History, at the University of Houston. Her works have been presented with School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Friends Gallery, The Edgelands Institute, Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy, Blaffer Museum, Project Row Houses, Houston Public Library, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Nameless Sound at Lawndale Arts Center and The Anderson Center For The Arts.
Curriculum Vitae (contact for full cv)
Education
MFA Sculpture,
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2027
MFA IPEF,
University of Houston, 2024 - 2025
B.S. Interdisciplinary Studies in Art, History, and Design
University of Houston, 2024
2025, Cosmologies of Aliveness, Elgin Street Studios, University of Houston, Houston, TX
Group Exhibitions
2026, (forthcoming), UW Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
2025, GlitchLab Art Show, Edgelands Institute, Houston, TX
2025, Everything We Can Possibly Hold, Friends Gallery, Houston, TX
2024, Convergence Research, Blaffer Museum, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2024, “A Metta Prayer”, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
2024, Annual BFA Student Exhibition, Blaffer Museum, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2024, CAMHLAB, Contemporary Arts Museum at POST Houston, Houston, TX
2023, Who lit the fire?, Contemporary Arts Museum, New Orleans, LA
2023, Mental, Anderson Center for the Arts, Houston, TX
2025, GlitchLab, Edgelands Institute, Houston, TX
2023, CAMHLAB, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX
2023, Project Row Houses Summer Studios, Houston, TX
Curatorial Projects
2025, Everything We Can Possibly Hold, Friends Gallery, Houston, TX
2024, Freedmen’s Town, Aldine Library