Tigist Yoseph Ron: YAYA
  • Fridman Gallery is honored to present Tigist Yoseph Ron's debut solo exhibition in the United States. The exhibition includes new paintings alongside Ron's signature charcoal-and-eraser drawings. While her work often explores themes of motherhood and femininity, YAYA shifts focus, capturing the complex emotional dissonance between the artist and her late father. Through layering and erasing, Ron reclaims her memory and childlike perspective, observing her father from a distance and tracing their estranged connection.
  • I deeply appreciate my family’s powerful legacy, but I often wish for a lighter burden, a chance to forge my...

    Tigist Yoseph Ron

    Being, 2024

    Charcoal on paper

    58.5 x 33 in. 

    I deeply appreciate my family’s powerful legacy, but I often wish for a lighter burden, a chance to forge my own path. Though my father’s strength and my mother’s spiritual lineage provide confidence, I sometimes feel undeserving, and the weight can be debilitating. I wrestle with balancing my Ethiopian and Jewish heritage, my desire for individuality, and my discomfort when straying too far from my roots. Moving to Israel at seven made me question the coexistence of Ethiopian and Israeli cultures. Now, I try to reconcile these influences with my fascination for Black American culture. As I raise my children, I wonder if they need deeper cultural grounding to thrive. Ultimately, a transcendent force moves my hand to the canvas, beyond any singular identity.

    – Tigist Yoseph Ron

  • Artist
  • While the exhibition focuses on her late father, Ron's work adittionaly reflects the struggle of the Ethiopian-Jewish community to preserve its heritage. We recognize that presenting an exhibition about this history cannot occur without acknowledging the ongoing suffering of Palestinian families, who continue to face unspeakable loss of life, destruction and displacement. As a space that has championed underrepresented voices, Fridman Gallery is dedicated to fostering artistic expression void of censorship and we look forward to presenting works by Palestinian artists. 
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