01/07/2025
OPENING ON SATURDAY The Social Gallery is proud to present the debut exhibition by Yeabsra Yemru, a young printmaker and painter from the influential Alle School of Fine Art. Yeabsra's work features portraits of silent figures, often darkened with smeared charcoal and set against vibrant color backdrops. These ghostly figures, textured with emotion, pose in confined spaces, often pierced by a round window.
In Yeabsra's art, what is seen is less important than what is felt. The artist emphasizes a meaningful gaze and hands, suggesting something unspoken. The bold and sharp background colors cut through the monochrome like a scream in a silent room. The rough charcoal texture enhances the rawness of the image, giving it a physical, almost violent tactility. Unlike the faces, which are often obscured or darkened, the hands remain more defined, sometimes even exaggerated. Whether holding an object or gesturing, thereโs something ghostly in the way the hands float, sometimes dislocated from realistic anatomy.
Yeabsra's compositions deliberately challenge perspective and continuity of physics and time. Drawing from the lineage of neo-expressionism and contemporary Afrosurrealism, the work speaks to generational memory, unspoken trauma, and cultural inheritance, yet resists easy interpretation.
Come to this powerful debut exhibition.
The Social Gallery is proud to support emerging artists and offer audiences the chance to discover the new, rising talent in our city.