In ofNote E. Ethelbert Miller speaks with Kebedech Tekleab:
More hereEM: When creating new artwork how important is memory and vision?
Serenity, 1993 © Kebedech Tekleab
KT: I find this question interesting. If it deals with the issue of time, then memory and vision try to bridge the past, the present, and the future. It is true that there are times when creating new work one might depend on personal or social memories. The existing objective condition might also be the source of inspiration, or subjective ideas may serve to create visionary directions.
In my work, the demarcation of time dissolves, the new truth could be old and the past may exist in the present. It is the moment of personal discovery that marks time—either in the form of pure memory or in the active form of the present continuous.
For example, Robert Motherwell’s, “The Elegy to the Spanish Republic” appears to be a piece that has a time print on it. It is about a specific social condition in Spain, however, it is also a phenomenon mankind has passed through. What is equally important and new could be the aesthetics itself, the concept of the art, the way Motherwell thought about his work in terms of what it is instead of what it means. The idea of what is abstract and what is real became sufficiently important for him that he defended his non-objective piece as something real.
