Mother Ethiopia

Perhaps his most intimate large-scale work, Mother Ethiopia depicts a woman of extraordinary composure — she looks not at the viewer but past them, into a distance that belongs entirely to her. She wears a shamma of white and gold. Her hands are folded. Around her, barely visible, the contours of mountains and sky suggest the highland landscape of the Ethiopian interior.

On the work

Afewerk later said of the work: "I did not want to paint a symbol. I wanted to paint a person. The symbol would come from that — from the particularity, not from the generality." The model for the figure is believed to have been a woman from Ankober, the artist's birthplace, though he never confirmed this. The canvas has remained at Villa Alpha, Addis Ababa, in the collection Afewerk assembled over his lifetime.

The work is notable for what it withholds as much as for what it shows. There is no narrative action, no allegorical attribute — no shield, no torch, no map. The woman simply exists, in her dignity and her depth. In this, Mother Ethiopia is a rebuke to the tradition of allegorical painting, which reduces persons to types. Afewerk's woman refuses reduction.