Define yourself through otherness

BY TAMRAT GEZAHEGNE & DIENKE GROENHOUT
A workshop in which you recheck your values and identity and create a new symbol ABC for yourself. The artists will tell about projects they did in Ethiopia: Dienke made costumes to find a new identity as a “foreigner”, Tamrat developed a new script of more than 200 symbols to discover his identity as an Ethiopian. Both research the questions: Can we try to redesign the values that we find important in life, and ask ourselves what do we (want to) represent in this world? In the workshop, you will design your own symbols and block print them on a small flag, or tattoo it on your body. We will create a flag line with our joint values and display it in the window of MakeFactory.

Tamrat Gezahegne
Tamrat (multimedia artist): “I can say I am Ethiopian, it is in my passport and it is an identity that was given to me but can I truly represent it? I don’t even know what it means to say I am Ethiopian. So I travelled my country to find out about it and to find out which values do I share with all the nation nationalities  that Ethiopia contains. Each symbol is like a talisman. The script includes traditional and modern habits, food cultures, heritage and social values.” Website

Dienke Groenhout
Dienke (interdisciplinairy artist): “I traveled the world a lot and I was given many names like foreigner, outsider, stranger. At a certain point I felt that my outside was disconnected from what I felt I was on the inside. People thought that I belonged to some group, that I didn’t represent in my own feelings. And I started to research this feeling by making costumes for myself that created a whole new context for me. A possibility to represent a new identity that I could be and to wonder what I wanted to be.” Website