

Surface Tension
Selome Muleta and Youssra Raouchi
Surface Tension
Selome Muleta and Youssra Raouchi
Surface Tension
Addis Fine Art is pleased to present a joint exhibition of Selome Muleta and Youssra Raouchi. Together, the artists explore the bodies and spaces we inhabit. They take on what it means to feel at home, the ways in which we curate our interior worlds, and the mythical and ephemeral nature of our identities. Rooms and planes expose the contradictions between closed spaces and open spaces, often becoming dreamlike landscapes rather than fixed enclosures.
Nature features heavily in both artists’ work, wild yet domestic, foregrounding the interrelations between the human and the ecological and rejecting binaries of the built-up man-made interior and the unkempt, unwieldy exterior. Nature holds a nurturing power in Selome’s work, presenting opportunities for release and rejuvenation.
Animals wander in and out of both artists' paintings. Selome’s cats, who are also her real life companions, open up the domestic space to include elements of the natural world; whilst Youssra’s depictions of animals are more tense and foreboding, often separated into different realms as mirrors for the human.
Both Selome and Youssra revel in the discomfort of contorted bodies, which are posed reclining on chairs and curled in bathtubs, their positioning reminders of the awkwardness of our own embodied state. Bodies overlap with bodies, which in turn fold and disappear into their surroundings. Both well-versed in fine art, Selome and Youssra play with form to create new worlds. Selome uses colour and transparency to meld the foreground with the background depicting the ways in which we are embodied in our surroundings. Similarly, Youssra disturbs perceptions of distance to blur the boundaries between the interior and the exterior. Space and body bleed into one another. Rich, intimate, and vulnerable, the works are visual incantations for self reflection: they invite new ways of looking at ourselves when we are alone.
Based in Addis Ababa, Selome Muleta (b. 1992) studied briefly at Entoto Polytechnic College and Abyssinia Fine Art School before embarking on her career as a full time artist. Selome crafts rich internal worlds through the colour-laden interior scenes of her canvases, which frequently depict women in states of inner reflection.
She has presented solo exhibitions at Addis Fine Art’s London and Addis Ababa galleries, and had a solo booth at Frieze London 2022 with Addis Fine Art. Her work has been acquired by the Denver Museum of Art, where it is now on view as part of the recent reinstallation of the museum’s Modern and Contemporary Arts of Africa galleries.


Youssra Raouchi (b. 1999) is a Moroccan multi-disciplinary artist, whose style merges figurative and expressionist styles across painting and mixed media works. She is a graduate of the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tétouan, Morocco, where she studied Fine Art. She is interested in notions of space, sexuality, and painting as a concept. Her works transcend categorization, questioning traditional mediums and the limitations they place on the artists.
Youssra's work has been included in various group and solo exhibitions in Ghana, Los Angeles, Marrakech, Casablanca, and Cape Town. She is a finalist of the 2024 Norval Sovereign African Art Prize.

SELOME MULETA

Immersion VII, 2023
Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas
72⅝ x 65 in.
185 x 165 cm


62¾ x 55⅛ in.
160 x 140 cm


150 x 150 cm





YOUSSRA RAOUCHI

Disappearing Completely, 2023
Acrylic and oil pastels
58⅞ x 78⅜ in.
150 x 200 cm
51⅛ x 70⅞ in.
130 x 180 cm


59 x 39⅜ in.
150 x 100 cm


180
Untitled , 2023
Acrylic and oil pastels
59 x 39⅜ in.
150 x 100 cm


Born in 1991 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
She lives and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
EDUCATION
2014 Entoto Polytechnic College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2012 Abyssinia Fine Art School, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
SOLO and TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2024 Surface Tension , Selome Muleta and Youssra Raouchi, Addis Fine Art, London, UK
2022 Frieze London, with Addis Fine Art, London, UK
2022 Collapsing Space , Addis Fine Art, London, UK
2020 Tsédal , Addis Fine Art, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Form and Fantasy , Afriart, Kampala, Uganda
2023 Horn of Africa Exhibition , The Africa Centre, Collaboration with Addis Fine Art, London, UK
2021 From Modern to Contemporary: Artists from the Horn of Africa and Diaspora , with CFHILL, Stockholm, Sweden
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, USA
YOUSSRA RAOUCHI CV
Born in 1999 in Morocco. She lives and works in Tétouan, Morocco.
EDUCATION
2022 Bachelor Fine Art, Institut National des Beaux-Arts, Tétouan, Morocco
2020 Diplôme de Restauration d'Oeuvres d'Art, Instituto Cervantes de Tétouan in partner ship with Museo Reina Sofia, Spain, Tétouan, Morocco
SOLO and TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2024 Surface Tension Selome Muleta and Youssra Raouchi, Addis Fine Art, London, UK
2023 Painting with My Eyes Closed , ADA Contemporary Gallery, Accra, Ghana
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Memories We Have Forgotten Brescia, Italy
2024 Finalist Exhibition, Norval Sovereign African Art Prize, Cape Town, South Africa
2024 The Sound of Our Souls UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, USA
2023 Toute les Premières Fois , Group Exhibition, Le 18, Marrakesh, Morocco
2022 Emergence , Villa des Arts, Casablanca, Morocco
2021 Group Exhibition, Tamawqo3, Tétouan, Morocco
2021 Intervention et Performance , Festival d'Art Indigene, Souk El had Sabbah, Rabat, Morocco
2021 Open Talk , Le Cube Independent Art Room, Rabat, Morocco
2020 FLATTA Résidence Barage, Asmir, Morocco
RESIDENCIES
2023 Noldor Residency, Accra, Ghana

In 2016, Rakeb Sile and Mesai Haileleul co-founded Addis Fine Art, creating the first white-cube gallery space for modern and contemporary art in Ethiopia. Described as one of the “Most Important Young Galleries in the World” (Artsy 2019), the gallery has since then grown to become one of the leading galleries in Africa, establishing a prominent international platform for artists from the Horn of Africa.
In October 2021, Addis Fine Art London moved into expanded premises in Eastcastle Street, opening a two-storey gallery space in the heart of Fitzrovia. The London gallery programme will encapsulate Addis Fine Art’s commitment to heightened international exposure for, and critical reappraisal of, African art on the world stage. The gallery’s Addis Ababa space will continue to be an incubator for emerging talent, facilitating critical engagement within the local market and encouraging the growth and development of the artworld ecosystem on the continent. The gallery will also serve as a space for artists from the diaspora to return to the continent and share and develop their practice.
Addis Fine Art
21 Eastcastle Street
London W1W 8DD
© 2024 Addis Fine Art
Credits:
Addis Fine Art
Images © 2024 Youssra Raouchi & Selome Muleta
Text © 2024 Naomi Snow
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Addis Fine Art
Designed by Lucy Harbut
Headshots by Insaf Benali (Youssra) & Lucy Emms (Selome)


