Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, December 24, 2021: Aïda Muluneh, an Ethiopian emerging artist, photographer (#1452)

Aïda Muluneh (1974) was born in Ethiopia, she left the country at a young age and spent an itinerant childhood between Yemen and England. After several years in a boarding school in Cyprus, she finally settled in Canada in 1985. In 2000, she graduated with a degree from the Communication Department with a major in Film from Howard University in Washington D.C. After graduation she worked as a photojournalist at the Washington Post, however, her work can also be found in several international publications.

Also as an exhibiting artist, Aida’s work has been shown in South Africa, Mali, Senegal, Egypt, Canada, United States of America, France, Germany, England, Norway, China, to name a few countries. A collection of her images can be found in the permanent collection at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Hood Museum, The RISD Museum of Art and the Museum of Biblical Art in the United States. She is the 2007 recipient of the European Union Prize in the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie, in Bamako, Mali, the 2010 winner of the CRAF International Award of Photography in Spilimbergo, Italy, Winner of 2020 The Royal Photographic Society Curatorship award, a 2018 CatchLight Fellow in San Francisco, USA. In 2019, she also became the first black woman to co-curator of the Nobel Peace Prize exhibition while serving as a Canon Europe Ambassador.

As one of the leading experts on photography from Africa, she has been a jury member on several photography competitions, most notably the Sony World Photography Awards 2017 and the World Press Photo Contest 2017. She has also been on various panel discussions on photography, such as the African Union cultural summit, Art Basel, and Tedx/Johannesburg. In 2019, she was also a master for the 2019 Joop Swart Masterclass and gave the renowned Sem Presser Lecture at the World Press Photo Festival in Amsterdam.

Her work has also been featured on notable publications and news outlets, such as the New York Times, TIME, The Atlantic, Vice, OkayAfrica, The Guardian, Elle Magazine, the British Journal of Photography, CNN Style, and BBC. In 2019, her piece (commissioned by WaterAid), “The Sorrows We Bear,” served as one of the 24 Magazine Covers About Climate Change for Washington Post Magazine.

Aida is the founder and director of the Addis Foto Fest (AFF), the first international photography festival in East Africa hosted since 2010 in the city of Addis Ababa. She continues to educate, curate and develop cultural projects with local and international institutions through her company DESTA (Developing and Educating Society Through Art) For Africa Creative Consulting PLC (DFA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

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