This past week marked the Ethiopian New Year, a transitional point bearing nuanced meaning for those celebrating from outside of the continental mainland. Each September, a new season is signified by the blossoming of the Meskel flower, known as the Adey Abeba in the Amharic language. It has come to represent beauty and survival in equal measure, reviving itself every year without fail across Ethiopian highlands despite harsh ecological conditions.
In Amharic, there is a level of linguistic interchangeability when referring to the flower, taking on meanings of youth, rebirth, and expansion simultaneously. For creatives like Ruhama Wolle, one of many global voices documenting the outpouring of an Ethiopian cultural renaissance currently unfolding, the iconography of the flower is not static. Its radiance and defiance mirror that of a new generation of artists channeling the tug of displacement and return as a source of expansive invention.
In a new photo series entitled “ ,” Wolle contends with self-declaration of home and identity unfettered by miles of distance. Over the past two years, Wolle, an editor and creative producer has spent extended time in Ethiopia, returning to find a cultural rebirth amid the country’s political turmoil and genocide. In the country and its global diaspora, young people are creating work of who they are and where they come from.
This fruitfulness, though, is a paradox arriving during a continued reckoning with years of war, loss, and that .