Biruk Addisu (b. 2000, Ethiopia) is an emerging artist whose work blends technical skill and cultural storytelling. Trained at Addis Ababa University’s Alle School of Fine Arts (BFA, 2025), he debuted at Aurora Art Gallery and continues to expand his multidisciplinary practice. Rooted in Ethiopia’s contemporary art scene, his evolving visual language explores identity and heritage.
Language transcends communication - it is identity etched in form, history made visible. The Ge'ez and Sabaean scripts of my Ethiopian heritage are my primal visual language: ancient marks that carry the weight of civilizations, yet pulse with contemporary relevance. In my practice, I liberate these scripts from their textual confines, transforming them into living visual systems that converse across time.
My work resists the flattening tide of digital homogenization, asserting the vitality of indigenous knowledge through gesture, material, and space. These are not relics to be preserved, but dynamic forms to be reanimated, each composition a site of cultural translation where historical memory and modern expression collide. The viewer becomes participant in this dialogue, their presence completing the work’s intention.
By deconstructing and reimagining these scripts as visual narratives, I map the unbroken thread between ancestral wisdom and present consciousness. The marks ask: What survives when language becomes image? How does form carry meaning when divorced from literal reading? This is art as cultural continuum, an invitation to witness, to question, and ultimately, to remember.