Blen Deresse (b. Ethiopia) is an Addis Ababa-based painter exploring psychological tension through atmospheric compositions. Transitioning from fashion to fine arts, her work captures emotional paralysis, balancing gesture and negative space to reveal the fragile line between comfort and constraint. Her paintings serve as mirrors of unspoken struggles, establishing her as a rising voice in contemporary art.
My work excavates the silent emotional undercurrents of contemporary existence those hidden states of mind that linger beneath the surface of daily life. I paint stillness without peace: bodies at rest but minds ensnared in fear, doubt, or exhaustion. This duality, the tension between outward composure and inner turbulence, forms the core of my practice.
I investigate the paradox of the "comfort zone" a sanctuary that becomes a cage. Through my figures, I explore how avoidance, fear of failure, and emotional paralysis manifest in the body. My subjects appear passive, yet their stillness is charged; they are not lazy, but trapped. In their quietude, I find a universal language of unspoken struggle.
These paintings are mirrors. By rendering the weight of private burdens through posture, gesture, and atmospheric tension, I invite viewers to recognize their own concealed battles. What appears as individual experience reveals itself as collective truth.
My practice creates space for these invisible conflicts: the push-pull between growth and stasis, hope and resignation, the craving for change and the terror it inspires. Ultimately, this work grapples with human contradiction, our simultaneous longing for calm and capacity for unrest, and how this friction defines us.