Tsedaye Makonnen

Futures Fellow

09/05/2022–12/31/2022

Tsedaye Makonnen is an artist-curator, researcher, and cultural producer as well as a Black American mother, perinatal community health worker and Doula, and daughter of East Africans. Her studio practice primarily focuses on intersectional feminism and migration. Her intention is to create a spiritual network around the world that aims to recalibrate the energy towards something positive and life affirming. Makonnen is the current recipient of a permanent large-scale public art commission for the city of Providence in Rhode Island. In 2019, she was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and in 2021 her light sculptures were acquired by the Smithsonian for their permanent collection. Most recently, she performed at the 2022 Venice Biennale for Simone Leigh’s Loophole Retreat. In 2023, Makonnen will be exhibiting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She is represented by Addis Fine Art, and lives between Washington, D.C., and London. At the Clark, she will continue to work on a project that explores how performance art can challenge whiteness, colonialism, and the effects of systemic forms of oppression on migration.