Selome Muleta and Youssra Raouchi | Surface Tension, 2024

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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.

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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.

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Selome Muleta

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.

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Youssra Raouchi

SELOME MULETA

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Selome Muleta Immersion X , 2023 Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas 65 x 118⅛ in. 165 x 300 cm

Immersion VII, 2023

Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas

72⅝ x 65 in.

185 x 165 cm

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Selome Muleta

62¾ x 55⅛ in.

160 x 140 cm

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Selome Muleta Immersion IX, 2023 Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas
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Selome Muleta Immersion VI, 2023 Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas 59 x 59 in. 150 x 150 cm

150 x 150 cm

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Selome Muleta Lean On IV, 2024 Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas 59 x 59 in.
22 23
Selome Muleta Untitled, 2024 Acrylic and oil pastel on paper 23⅜ x 16½ in. 60 x 42 cm Selome Muleta Untitled , 2024 Acrylic and oil pastel on paper 23⅜ x 16½ in. 60 x 42 cm
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Selome Muleta Untitled, 2024 Acrylic and oil pastel on paper 23⅜ x 16½ in. 60 x 42 cm Selome Muleta Untitled, 2024 Acrylic and oil pastel on paper 23⅜ x 16½ in. 60 x 42 cm

YOUSSRA RAOUCHI

Disappearing Completely, 2023

Acrylic and oil pastels

58⅞ x 78⅜ in.

150 x 200 cm

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Youssra Raouchi

51⅛ x 70⅞ in.

130 x 180 cm

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Youssra Raouchi Sleeping Cloud , 2023 Acrylic and oil pastels
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Youssra Raouchi Out , 2023 Acrylic and oil pastel 51⅛ x 70⅞ in. 130 x 180 cm

59 x 39⅜ in.

150 x 100 cm

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Youssra Raouchi Gaze , 2023 Acrylic and oil pastels

180

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Youssra Raouchi Exit , 2023 Acrylic and oil pastels 70⅝ x 50¾ in. x 130 cm

Untitled , 2023

Acrylic and oil pastels

59 x 39⅜ in.

150 x 100 cm

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Youssra Raouchi
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Youssra Raouchi Abyss , 2023 Oil on canvas 13⅜ x 11⅜ in. 34 x 29 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

42 43 SELOME MULETA CV

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)

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