Aïda Muluneh

Aïda Muluneh (born May 5, 1974, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is an Ethiopian photographer, educator, and entrepreneur known for her Afrofuturist photography that incorporates vibrant colours and body painting to create surreal scenes. Muluneh’s work examines her heritage and experience as an Ethiopian woman while exploring themes of history, politics, gender, and contemporary issues, such as climate change and water access.

When she was a child, Muluneh and her family left Ethiopia, spending time in Yemen and England. She attended boarding school in Cyprus before her family settled in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1985. While in high school, she became interested in photography, observing that international coverage of her home country was prone to images of war, famine, or other crises and did not offer the full narrative.

Muluneh attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., and majored in film. She found inspiration in the works of African American photographers, including Harlee Little, Chester Higgins, Jr., Gordon Parks, Michel du Cille, and Dudley Brooks. After graduating in 2000, she worked as a freelance photojournalist for The Washington Post. She found, however, that photojournalism limited her expression and began branching out into fine art photography. Inspiration came from poets, musicians, and artists such as Nick Cave.

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Muluneh’s background in photojournalism informed her early black-and-white photographs. In the work Spirit of Sisterhood (2000), the medium draws attention to the bright white dots that bisect the faces of her subjects: two young Black women. Muluneh found inspiration from face painting practiced by those living in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia, and she continued to incorporate body painting in her work as a way of blending the traditional with the contemporary. Since then, she has examined the use of body painting and other forms of body ornamentation, including tattooing, piercing, and scarification, practiced across Africa and throughout the world.

The prevalence of primary colours in Muluneh’s work is a natural progression from her previous black-and-white journalistic photographs. The vivid reds, yellows, and blues also serve as a nod to Ethiopia, reflecting the colours frequently seen in church wall paintings, especially during the Gondarine period (1632–1769). Muluneh occasionally incorporates green—as seen in To speak in silence (2022)—mirroring the colours of the Ethiopian national flag.

Objects with cultural significance in Ethiopia also frequently appear in Muluneh’s work. The image of a traditional Ethiopian coffee pot, appears in several of her photographs—including The certainty of the uncertainty (2019). In an interview with WBEZ Chicago in 2023, she described how the jebena signifies the country’s rich coffee culture: “As the birthplace of coffee in the world, Ethiopia has a very special link to that. It’s more than a drink. For us, it’s a moment of coming together. It’s a moment of having conversation.”

In 2007 Muluneh gained international exposure when she was awarded the European Union Prize at the Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie in Bamako, Mali. That same year she moved back to Africa and later split her time between Addis Ababa, her hometown and the capital of Ethiopia; Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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Muluneh continued to create conversations about representation and the future of Africa. In her 2018 collection Water Life, for example, she examines the lack of water access in Ethiopia while also exploring its effects on gender equality. Muluneh does not attempt to hide conflicts and struggles but creates a more nuanced perspective of Ethiopia and Africa more broadly.

In addition to creating art, Muluneh was also deeply involved in educating, promoting, and selling the works of photographers from Africa. In 2010 she founded DESTA for Africa Creative Consulting in Addis Ababa to help educate African photographers while also developing local and international projects. That year, she also established the biennial photography festival Addis Foto Fest, East Africa’s first international photography festival to showcase the work of photographers of Africa and beyond. In 2022 Muluneh launched Africa Foto Fair, an extension of Addis Foto Fest, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. She also founded Africa Print House, a photography printing facility expanding access to international standardized printing services throughout the continent.

Muluneh has exhibited in various countries, including South Africa, China, the United States, Germany, England, and more. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and others. In 2019 she became the first Black woman to co-curate the Nobel Peace Prize exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, and the following year, she was commissioned to create a 10-image photo series for the annual exhibition. As part of a 2023 project for the Public Art Fund in New York, her series This is where I am graced bus stops in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Abidjan.