Photo Credit: Kerry Constantino

On New York’s Lower East Side, the Fridman Gallery, known for championing a diverse roster of international contemporary artists, is currently showing YAYA, the debut solo exhibition in the United States by Ethiopian Israeli artist Tigist Yoseph Ron.

“In this exhibition I am showing 21 charcoal and oil portraits of my father. My father passed away 3 years ago, and this group of works helped me to ask and answer all kinds of questions that troubled me after he passed away,” Tigist explains her work. 

The opening also became a reunion with her two sisters Hirut, who is based in New York, and Maritu, who lives in Atlanta. “It has been more than 15 years since the last time we were all together. It made the exhibition more meaningful to have my sisters with me when all the portraits in the show are our father’s.”

Her mother was a potter and used to do beautiful crafts.  Tigist mainly works with natural charcoal on paper. “I love the simplicity and softness that charcoal can create. Working in black and white helps me focus on the story, emotions, and sense of light.” The main themes in her work are femininity, motherhood, and parenthood. “I draw people and moments that touch or touched my heart, such as gestures of the affinity between mothers and their children, families, and friends.”

The starting point for her works generally is “a person I am close to, but as the process progresses, the specific identity of the person is slightly obscured to emphasize the movement and rhythm that are created. Sometimes the way the light falls on a figure or strong emotions lead me to place more emphasis on the relations between the shapes and forms in the drawing. At the same time, it is important to me that the picture not be completely abstract; it is important that the figures or situations be sufficiently identifiable to convey the story and emotion in the initial impression.”

After the terrorist attacks of October 7th and the war that followed, her studio became a public shelter and she was unable to use it. Tigist was fortunate enough to be awarded an artist residency in Surf Point, Maine, where all her charcoal drawings were created.

Still, to her, Israel is “home. Israel is the place I understand the most and feel that I belong. I feel connected to the people, the culture and language.” Ethiopia, the country she was born in, on the other hand is “magic, it exists mainly in my childhood memories, emotions and my imagination.”

Tigist grew up in a religious family and went to religious schools. Judaism gives her “confidence and a sense of continuity even though I don’t practice it. I think that it is thanks to my parents and the generations before who kept their Jewish identity in the most difficult times and places and kept dreaming about Jerusalem.”

To learn more about Tigist, check out her website:

https://www.tigistyosephron.com/

If you are in New York, visit her exhibition at the Fridman Gallery, which is still open until February 22:

https://fridmangallery.com/exhibitions/83-tigist-yoseph-ron-yaya/