Falaka Armide Yimer

Falaka Armide Yimer (* 1942 in Nazret , today's Adama , Ethiopia ) is an Ethiopian woodcut artist who lives in Australia .

Life

Yimer first attended a school of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Nazret, around 80 km southeast of the Ethiopian capital, where he learned the ancient Ethiopian liturgical language Ge'ez . After that he was taught at state schools until 1956, which he finished with the 8th grade. During his childhood and youth he mostly lived apart from his parents and had to take part in gainful employment as a child in order to survive. As a young man he was drawn to Yemen and Saudi Arabia , where he hoped for a better life. After a while he returned disappointed from the Arabian Peninsula to Ethiopia.

In Addis Ababa he was able to obtain a higher school diploma with a government scholarship and at the same time study from 1968 to 1972 at the art college that had existed since 1958. He first decided to study painting, but when the expressiveness of the German-Brazilian Hansen-Bahias , who taught in Addis Ababa from 1963 to 1966 and whose works were on view at the Goethe Institute , left a deep impression on him, he switched to the class for Print directed by the American Wendy Kindred from 1967–1969. His talent aroused the interest of Ingeborg (Ingrid) Bolt and Harant Bagdhassarian who ran the Belvedere Art Gallery in Addis Ababa from 1964 to 1973 . With exhibitions in Addis Ababa and Salzburg , which they made possible, Yimer came to significant financial income for the first time.

This enabled him, this time with the mediation of the artist Skunder Boghossian , to take up further studies at the predominantly African-American Howard University ( College of Fine Arts ) in Washington , which he completed in 1980 with a master’s degree . In the USA he met other artists from Africa who influenced his work. After graduating, Yimer taught at Howard University for four years. Yimer's works were initially signed with Falaka Armide, in adaptation to Western names that do not exist in Ethiopia, he made Yimer, his father's second name, his family name abroad. From 1984 to 1994 he was a technician, restorer and conservator in the university's own gallery.

In 1994 he moved to Sydney , Australia. Most recently there he taught printmaking and art at Campbelltown College of Technology and Further Education . In addition to his artistic work, he has also worked in various galleries and museums in Sydney. He worked with students of Australian indigenous origin with particular interest .

His style is still influenced by the aesthetics of Hansen-Bahia even in old age, but was also supplemented by his own working methods, which include mixed techniques between woodcut and monotype or combinations of lithography and monotype. The connection with Ethiopia and its historical and Christian iconography continues to be the focus of his work, but he also deals with contemporary topics such as the time of Derg and the traumatic memories associated with it. According to Yimer, he has a special relationship with the cities of Aksum , Gonder and Lalibela in the north of his home country. Many of his works are now in the collections of the National Museum of African Art , the Ethiopian National Museum , the Campelltown Arts Center , or in the Ethnographic Museum in Zurich .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Elisabeth Biasio, Peter R. Gerber: Welcome Art? - Prints from Canada and Ethiopia - A chapter in the history of collections and exhibitions at the Ethnographic Museum . Publisher of the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-909105-53-3 , p. 62-77 .