Dawit L. Petros
Addis-Chromes
Addis Ababa International Photography Festival
Atelier Art Gallery
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Addis-Chromes is a project rooted in photography and also encompasses painting, sculpture, architecture and installation. Addis Ababa occupies three important roles in the project: the subject, site of production and site of exhibition. The working strategy involves a series of walks in which photographs of color and their related objects such as architectural fragments, fabrics, and refuse are collected. These digital photographs were transferred to a computer and the colors are sampled to create monochromatic fields. These monochromes become the building blocks for a series of abstract works; two painted wall murals and a sculptural object. The final component are closeup photographic images of the walls of buildings that border the neighborhoods in which the walks occur. The resulting are “Social Abstractions,” (or “Site Specific Abstractions”), works invested in issues of color, process and abstraction, while rooted in the singularities of a particular space. By using a highly formal language to investigate Addis Ababa, a parallel strategy for applying photography and extrapolating the histories of a specific location are proposed. This project has been realized through close cooperation between Dawit L. Petros and Ethiopian artist Eyob Kitaba.
