Twofold
Emebet Belete – 2019
Twofold is a series of works by Belleville-based artist Emebet Belete on Shemma, featuring Amharic, English and French songs transliterated into one another.
An Ethiopian hand-woven cotton fabric, often with a coloured border design, Shemma is used in Ethiopia as a shawl, with the traditional cloth worn by both men and women. As a result of the artist’s perceptions when living and thinking in more than one language, the project explores how language is both separate and shared, in relation to how it becomes part of our cultural heritage, personal experience, and the lens through which we see the world.
Artist Statement
In our multi-linguistic communities, language is both separate and shared. Language is part of our cultural heritage, our personal experience, and the lens through which we see the world, while written language is expressive and part of our artistic heritage. Written language has been a component of my artwork since my first exhibitions in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Amharic has its own script, its own beauty, and Ethiopian cultural heritage includes illustrated
manuscripts from hundreds of years ago.
Works on Shemma is an exploration of these visions of language. The songs that I’ve chosen for Twofold have had a different impact on me as part of my personal journey. Each song is written with white acrylic, with English and French songs presented in Amharic, and Amharic songs using the Latin alphabet. How I viewed language necessarily changed when I came to Canada. Amharic is a phonetic script, useful in transliterating works from other languages, and accessible with a language key. For myself as an immigrant, studying French, and later art at Queen’s University, Amharic was particularly useful in writing down vocabulary.
About the Artist
Emebet Belete—
Emebet Belete is an artist and educator who was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A graduate of the Addis Ababa Fine Arts School, she received her BFA and B. Ed from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. She has exhibited in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, France, China and Canada. She uses pastel, oil acrylic, collage, and mixed media to create images that reflect her experiences growing up in Addis Ababa, and living in Canada and Asia. Her work can be found at the National Museum of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian National Institute of Culture, and TEDA Archives (Tianjin), as well as in private collections around the world. Emebet is a recipient of a 2018 Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance Grant, and 2017 – 2019 OAC School Projects grants, which she uses to teach students in her local schools in the Bay of Quinte.