Abel Bedilu (b. 2001, Ethiopia) is an Addis Ababa-based artist working at the intersection of monotype printmaking and experimental street photography. His blurred, dynamic compositions explore movement, memory, and urban energy, reflecting themes of time, disconnection, and self-reflection. Embracing chance in his process, his work captures a generation caught between inertia and progress.
My work interrogates the ephemerality of urban life, the way crowds dissolve into the city’s rhythm, their movements fleeting, and their presence both vivid and vanishing. This obsession began at 4 Kilo Square, a pulsating nexus where I sketched figures in constant motion: hailing taxis, striding toward unseen destinations, rarely pausing to inhabit the space around them. Each attempt to capture them ended in frustration; no single figure remained long enough to commit to paper. In this relentless rush, I saw a collective disconnection, bodies in motion yet minds adrift, tethered to routine but untethered from presence.
These observations crystallized into my central themes: impermanence, detachment, and the fractured nature of self-awareness. I often use experimental street photography as a form of live sketching, later translating these impressions into monotype prints. The medium’s unpredictability mirrors the chaos I document, each print is a unique artifact, and its textures shaped by chance, its imperfections echoing the blurred boundaries of memory and movement.
My process is a dialogue between control and surrender. I construct compositions but invite accidents, allowing ink and pressure to distort figures, rendering them spectral, suspended between being and evaporation. In these liminal spaces, I interrogate the paradox of my generation: perpetually in motion yet stagnant, hurtling forward without direction. My work asks viewers to confront their own dissonance, Where am I? Where am I going? Am I present, or merely passing through?
At 4 Kilo Square, amid the churn of bodies, I find clarity. The crowd’s anonymity becomes a mirror; their blur, a testament to the fragility of moments I strain to hold. Through print and lens, I anchor what refuses to stay.