WATER LIFE AIDA MULUNEH SOLO EXHIBITION

WATER LIFE

AIDA MULUNEH SOLO EXHIBITION

MAY 3 - JULY 12, 2019

David Krut Projects, New York 

"Each piece addresses the impact of water access as it relates to issues like women's liberation, health, sanitation and education. While travelling across Ethiopia for my work, I often encounter streams of women traveling on foot and carrying heavy burdens of water. I have understood that women spend a great deal of time fetching water for the household, which has an adverse effect on the progress of women in our society. We cannot refute that it is mainly women who bear responsibility for collecting water, a burden that has great consequences for our future and the development of our nation." -Aida Muluneh on her 2018 series titled "Water Life"

Through an open commission, leading NGO WaterAid UK invited Aida Muluneh to respond to its core concerns – lack of access to safe water. 

 With essentially no limits imposed by the commissioning body, the project emerged out of a dialogue about art, its purpose, the role of art in advocacy, about the issues of water and sanitation themselves, and about how Africa is represented by both aid organizations and media from the global north. 

In this extraordinary, powerful body of work, Aida uses an Afro futurist approach to situate the issues in tableaux that are outside of time. The figure of the woman has an allegorical place in these tableaux that brings Aida’s unique vision to life. WaterAid intentionally took a step back to allow Aida space to create work freely, so that it emerges from her deeply centered practice rather than from a brief set by the organization.