Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
This is a piece about an Ethiopian Jewish artist and the professor, who champions him and many other Ethiopian Jewish artists. Being an Ethiopian Jew in Israel is not easy. Succeeding as an Ethiopian Jewish artist, no matter how talented you are, is equally difficult. In the summer of 2014, I connected with Dr. Tal Dekel and the artist Tesfaye Tegegne at a café near the University of Tel Aviv’s impressive art gallery, a place that is more open to diverse ethnicities than others in Israel but an area that also has the largest African immigrant population in the country and therefore, lots of associated issues. In the winter of 2014, as I was doing research about art by Ethiopian Jews, I came across an article: "Art and Struggle: Ethiopian-Israeli Women Artists," The International Journal of the Arts in Society, vol. 3, issue 5 (pp. 43-52), written by a professor Tal Dekel at the University of Tel Aviv. The study deals with the ways in which young women artists from the Ethiopian community in Israel struggle against racialization by using their art as a weapon. Professor Dekel answered my email of inquiry about her work immediately, agreeing to a meeting once I arrived in Israel. Ethiopians came to Israel in two major migration waves: Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991). There are over 130,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel; most live in central part of the country. Although accepted as Jews in a Jewish state with all that this entails i.e. joining the army and learning Hebrew, Ethiopians have had a very difficult time. Like all societies, Israel is not immune to racism. The Palestinian-Israelis feel discrimination from the Jews; the Mizrahi Jews from the Ashkenazi Jews; the Ultra -Orthodox from secular Jews; but the Ethiopians and other recent immigrants of color from Africa often exist at the bottom of the pecking order socially, economically, and educationally. And there is evidence to support this. Ethiopians came to Israel, a technologically advanced society, with a different culture, language, education, and skin color. Today, their challenges include, but are not limited to, a low level of formal education and living below the poverty line as defined by the Israeli government. Here are some 2014 facts from the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel: Approximately 135,500 Ethiopian immigrants are living in Israel today. Of these, 49,600 were born in Israel.
The average household size in the Ethiopian community was 4.4 persons, higher than the average for the general population (3.3).
In 2009, children aged 0-14 comprised 29% of the Ethiopian population, compared to 26% in the population of Jews and others.
The majority of the Ethiopian population lives in two districts: the Central District (38%) and the Southern District (24%). At the end of 2013, Netanya had the largest number of Ethiopian residents (10,900 persons).
88% of married Ethiopians are married to Ethiopians
In 2009, Ethiopian households expended a monthly average of NIS 9,385 compared to NIS 14,501 for all households. The monthly expenditure on education, culture and entertainment among Ethiopian households was NIS 1,172, compared to the NIS 1,762 national average.
One of the important facts about the difference between those Ethiopians born in Israel and those not is that many Ethiopian young adults had to adapt quickly to the new society. Therefore, the “crisis” caused by two waves of mass migration coincided with a crisis of children and young adults not born in Israel and yet not adults when they arrived from Ethiopia. Their journey overlapped with their identity formation. The question of how the migration changed and affected Ethiopian young adults is important in the work of this website. Much like Native Americans, often Ethiopian children were sent to boarding schools in development towns because the government and society thought their parents too backward to bring them up.
Tesfaye Tegegne refers to his art as “reception art.” He really cares about how his audience receives his work. He was born in 1975 and immigrated to Israel in 1997. Tesfaye has won the "Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and Aliya" prize, titled "The Yuri Stern Annual Award for highest Achievement in the Arts" in the year 2009. He had both solo and group exhibitions and also has permanent sculptures in public venues (such as in the city Holon). One of his major solo shows was titled "Unveiling through Banana Leaves" in the "Man and the Living World Museum National Park" in Ramat-Gan in 2010. In 2007 he received the Heinz prize in 2007 for his watercolor about Ethiopians yearning to come to Zion.
Remembering his roots, Tesfaye, who came to Israel from Ethiopia in 1997 at the age of 21, often crosses over, connecting the contemporary and the traditional. He combines motifs and materials such as banana leaves from his Ethiopian culture with contemporary materials such as polystyrene. One of his main themes is the connection between Israel and Ethiopia through Judaism. His work is truly transcultural.
Tesfaye is unique in his use of materials. In my interview with him, Tesfaye said he was unaware of others who use his combination of materials such as polystyrene and banana leaves. In Holon where Tesfaye sculpts, he often employs the same material used for making cars so that rain and the elements can’t dissolve his sculptures. He is also aware of the environment using recycled materials in his art. Currently, he is working on a big sculpture of a ship, constructed of iron and concrete. For his wedding to Elsa Gedamu, also an artist, Tesfaye designed the wedding clothes, using traditional banana leaves to do this. Please see the pictures of this remarkable wedding below.
He contributes to his community with sculptures such as the one for the disabled, which he completed in Rehovat. Tesfaye dreams of doing a work representing the walk through the Sudan by Ethiopians in the same way Moses led Jews out of Egypt. This would be a big sculpture and a memorial to the Ethiopians of mid eighties who made the journey through the Sudan to come to Israel.
Before the arrival of Tesfaye Tegegne and his artist wife Elsa Gedamu, Dr. Dekel and I were able to talk about Ethiopians and the situation of Ethiopian artists in Israel today. Dr. Dekel champions many artists, particularly women and immigrant artists and especially Ethiopians. She lectures in the Department of Art History and in the Women and Gender Studies Program at Tel Aviv University, Israel, specializing in modern and contemporary art and visual culture, and taking a particular interest in art and gender, multiculturalism and transnationalism. Dr. Dekel wants to dismantle the “ primitivist, naïve, ‘rural Ethiopian from the desert’ stereotype.”
The article mentioned above, which prompted my interview with her, “analyzes the work of 15 young women artists from the Ethiopian community in Israel who studied at the leading art schools in the country. It focuses on the visual expressions through which these women battle the stigmatization and exclusion of the Ethiopian community. The artists perceived as “others” in terms of race, profession and gender. …The results indicate that the work of the majority of artists, centers on the life of the Ethiopian community in Israel. This self-exploration represents a rare form of reflection in which black people, perceived as the object of the hegemonic “gaze”, cast a probing look at their own culture. “
On the cover of Dr. Dekel’s book, Women and Migration - Art and Gender in a Transnational Age, is a stunning painting by Dana Yosef, an Ethiopian-Israeli graphic artist, of a young Ethiopian woman. Yosef knew an Ethiopian girl who, when placed in charge of her baby sister, as their family made the journey through the desert from Ethiopia to Israel, had to watch the baby die from lack of water. In Yosef’s art water bottles and water are charged with meaning. Water bottles separated life from death. This “1.5 generation” of Ethiopians is of particular concern to Dr. Dekel. “1.5 “ is the special term given to those between first and second generations of Ethiopians who came to Israel. They came as children or young adults and remembered “the old place” and are in between or “on the seam.”
I recommend these resources about Ethiopian Israelis and other African refugees in Israel: Sudanese and Eritreans.
Israel’s Africa problem: http://tabletmag.com/podcasts/105143/israels-african-problem
Israel was founded on the belief that refugees deserve a safe haven. Does that apply to Jews only? http://www.enp.org.il/en/pages/Ethiopian_Israelis/
The Ethiopian National Project
"Live and Become," a 2005 French film about an Ethiopian Christian boy who disguises himself as an Ethiopian Jew to escape famine and emigrates to Israel. It was directed by Romanian-born Radu Mihăileanu. It won awards at the Cannes, Berlin and Vancouver film festivals among others.