Online artist talk with Aïda Muluneh
On Tuesday, 11 March 2025, at 6 p.m., we invite you to the Jakopič Gallery for an online conversation with the contemporary Ethiopian artist Aïda Muluneh, whose photographs are presented in the exhibition On the Edge of Past Future. Her works invite us to explore the complexities of Africa beyond the clichés often presented in the media, encouraging a deeper understanding of its challenges and resilience. You are invited to get to know her better!
Aïda Muluneh is a contemporary artist, photographer, photojournalist, educator and cultural entrepreneur, who is changing global perceptions of the African continent. Born in Addis Ababa in 1974, she left Ethiopia at an early age, when the country was in the midst of a devastating civil war. After living in different countries, she graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., with a degree in Communications, majoring in Film. Than she took a job at The Washington Post and began to question the mass media's attitude towards African Americans and the African continent. In 2019, she became the first black woman to co-curate the Nobel Peace Prize exhibition and returned the following year as a commissioned artist and created the series The Road of Glory for the Nobel Peace Center.
As a prominent Canon brand ambassador, Muluneh is deeply committed to advocating for the development of photography in Africa through her educational programs across the continent. She is the founder of Addis Foto Fest, the first international photography festival in East Africa, held since 2010 in Addis Ababa, and the Africa Foto Fair, established in 2022 in Côte d’Ivoire, that brings emerging and established talents to the global photography community.
Additionally, she established the Africa Print House in Abidjan—a creative space that provides end-to-end solutions for photographers in Africa. As an educator and cultural entrepreneur, she continues to develop projects with local and international institutions in Ethiopia and Côte d’Ivoire, where she currently lives.
Her photography has been widely exhibited and published worldwide and is included in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, the Hood Museum, the RISD Museum of Art, and the Museum of Biblical Art (USA). Muluneh received the European Union Prize at the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie in Bamako, Mali, in 2007, the CRAF International Award of Photography in Spilimbergo, Italy, in 2010, and was a CatchLight Fellow in San Francisco (USA), in 2018. In 2020, she was honored with the The Royal Photographic Society Award (Bristol, UK) in Curatorship.