Hana Yilma Godine: Spaces within Space

Fridman Gallery is honored to announce the representation and the first gallery exhibition of Ethiopian painter Hana Yilma Godine, Spaces within Space.

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Godine's use of flattened perspective, evenly distributed light, and elongated figures brings to mind Ethiopian icons, and the work of modernist masters, such as Tadesse Mesfin, one of Godine's teachers. Unlike western Christianity which sees Christ as manifesting two separate natures-human and divine, the Oriental Orthodox Church holds that Christ is fully human and fully divine in one indivisible physis (nature). Thus, biblical art in North Africa and the Near East was not subjected to the same rules of human reality (depth, shadow, scale) as it was in Europe, perhaps explaining why medieval Ethiopian iconography looks so profoundly modern.

Unburdened by the rules of realistic representation, Godine is able to bring parallel worlds onto a single plane without mixing them, to overlay exterior and interior spaces. Often grounded on traditional fabrics and yellowed newspapers, the paintings appear to time-travel, depicting the protagonist at different stages of her life, side-by-side. 

Featuring 12 works, each installed in a different way, and set to magical sounds of Ethio Jazz, the exhibition will take the viewer through coexisting histories and geographies, through psychological and architectural spaces defined by the paintings themselves.​