Mektefia

There seems to me to be a link, both metaphorical and literal, between the lives of the ‘mektefia’ (the wooden chopping board)   and women, in the society we inhabit. The attempt to confine our mothers and female persons in general to the kitchen by our society and the lifetime preoccupation of many women with cooking and caring for their families is an engagement, even a sacrifice that can be symbolized by the mektefia. The form and shape of the mektefia was my starting point in thinking about the female form that led me into deeper explorations. The life of the mektefia after it joins membership in the kitchen with its sure but gradual wearing out and deterioration is taken here as a symbolism of not only the sacrifices that many Ethiopian women were made to bear but also their formation and lived life in our society. From the very first time that this symbolic artistic correlation between the two occurred to me several years ago, I started studying the form of the mektefia and experimented with its shape in my sketches, paintings, sculptures and contemplated on its life in the kitchen and the home. Through it I tried to look into the lived lives of women in our society. The mektefia gave me a perspective to think about the formation, martyrdom, loss and violence as themes characterizing female persons in our society.

A casual observation shows that the shape of a typical mektefia resembles a woman’s torso. Every time food is presented as part of our daily meal, no one seems to pay attention to all the scars and beatings and cuttings the mektefia receives from the sharp knives used to cut and chop; transforming and gradually altering its shape and leaving a signature on its being.  The food we eat bears the mark and even the flesh of the mektefia rummaged and changed in time. I am here trying to use the lived life of the mektefia to interpret the lives of Ehiopian women. By interrogating our patriarchal society and its norms and its banking on the subjection of women, I would like to provoke especially us, (Ethiopian) males, to pay attention to the daily lives and sacrifices of Ethiopian women and the violence that characterizes their existence in our society. I seek to draw attention to the invisibilization of the strivings of Ethiopian women, their labor as well as the violence they experience both in the home and the public sphere. Our consumption of the fruits of women’s labor; our eating through their lives is likened here with the often unseen but visible scars and the overall physical deteriorations of the mektefia.

Our celebration of “masculine” merits, achievements and success disregards and invisibilizes the moral, psychological and physical pains and corrosions that Ethiopian women go through in their whole lifetime in our society. All my paintings, sculptures, installations & other related forms of artistic expressions in this subsequent exhibition elaborate this subtle symbolic correlation of a typical mektefia with Ethiopian women’s multi-faceted widely unseen & untold martyrdom.

Tamerat Siltan Tadesse

2018, Addis Ababa