Dawit Abebe: Mutual Identity, 2019

"Mutual Identity" "Mutual Identity" is among the seemingly episodic subject matters that my artistic practice revisits back and forth. I presume that this is mainly due to the chronic nature of shared commonalities and elements that shape our understandings of the realities surrounding us. Though the extents of subsisting disparities seem to over-shadow similarities; the bigger image that unifies the apparent divergences is the core ingredient that forces me to retrace the essences of "Mutual Identity". Yet, the dynamisms of the realities surrounding us that, in turn, enable us to consistently recognize the fact that we are parts of the reality is one of my drives to revisit the subject.

Though my recent works on "Mutual Identity" are by far the extensions of the ones I began since 2016, the latest ones do incorporate motifs like masks and are also devoid of cityscapes which were common in the earlier ones. This is due to the emphasis that compels me to focus more on people and their presence evident in the forms, objects and materials that would ideally represent them.

My preference in engaging the dominant human figure through drawings in contrast to the famous and ordinary figures I cut out from magazines is mainly to avail the essences of the "Mutual Identity" in various forms.

We are living in a world that demonstrates both shared commonalities and discrepancies. Yet, we all portray significant peculiarities that distinguish one from the other. This portrayal could, however, be convened to bigger universal human characteristics like egotism. That is one of the elements that my drawings aim to add on to the common identity that human beings share. On the other hand, I bring in some very specific references that are of greater significance for some of us and that could also be something trivial. The old letters (from Ethiopia) that I use as visual allusions are among such elements to impart as disparities. The masks and cages are also in similar notion though they attribute more to collective "Identities". Though the polarity of differences are evident everywhere; accommodating them in a humanistic framework that unifies us all is the foremost interest of the trending 'Mutual Identity' series in revealing the dimensions, spectrums, altitudes and ambivalences of existence.

Dawit Abebe April, 2019