Speakers
- Tsedaye Makonnen
- Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow
Tsedaye Makonnen is a multidisciplinary artist, mother and former doula who exhibits internationally on black femmehood and migration. She is currently one of the 2019 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellows, DC Public Library’s Maker-in-Residence and recipient of the DC Oral History Collaborative grant. She just completed Art on the Vine’s collaborative Savage-Lewis Artist Residency in Martha’s Vineyard this summer with Ayana Evans. She has performed at the Venice Biennale, Art Basel Miami, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, Pratt Film Institute, Queens Museum, Festival International d’Art Performance in Martinique, Chale Wote Street Art Festival in Ghana, Fendika Cultural Center in Ethiopia and more. The summer of 2018 she completed a residency with her mentor El Anatsui at his studio in Nsukka, Nigeria. Tsedaye has a new sculpture titled Aberash, a ten foot tall monument dedicated to black women and girls who have died at the hands of state sanctioned violence in the United States or along their journey to Europe that was recently exhibited at the National Gallery of Art and the August Wilson Center. She is currently taking part in speaking engagements across the country connecting migration and intersectional feminism.