Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist, researcher, and educator whose study of history informs a sustained examination of displaced legacies and their contemporary effects. Throughout the past decade and a half, he has focused on a critical re-reading of the entanglements between colonialism and modernity. These concerns derive from lived experiences: Petros is an Eritrean emigrant who spent formative years in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Kenya before settling in central Canada. The overlapping cultures, voices, and tenets of this constellation produced a dispersed consciousness that is global and transnational in stance and outlook. His works aim for an introspective and textured analysis of the historical factors that produced migratory conditions. Petros installs photographs, moving images, sculptural objects, and sound work according to performative, painterly, or site responsive logics. The experience of moving through these installations echoes the extensive travel required to produce them and recurrent visual or formal devices quietly indicate the complex backdrops against which the projects are set.
Petros completed the Whitney Independent Study Program and holds an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University, a BFA in Photography from Concordia University, and a BA in History from the University of Saskatchewan.
His work has recently been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Art Institute of Chicago; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam; The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Oslo Kunstforening; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; and Tate Modern, among other venues, as well as at the Bamako Biennial, Mali (2017), the 13th Biennial of Havana, Matanzas (2019), and the Liverpool Biennial (2025).
He has been recognized with awards including an Art Matters Fellowship; Canada Council for the Arts Production Grants; a Fulbright Fellowship; a J. Armand Bombardier Internationalist Fellowship; the Paul De Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award in Art Photography; and a Terra Foundation for American Art Research Fellowship, and he has participated in artist residencies at the Addis Ababa Photo Fest; the Center for Photography at Woodstock; Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Umbertide, Italy; G.A.S. Foundation, Lagos; Liverpool John Moores University School of Art and Design, Liverpool; and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Petros is the co-founder, with Heba Y. Amin, of the Black Athena Collective. He is represented by Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Canada, and Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK. Dawit L. Petros is an Associate Professor in the Studio Art Department at Dartmouth College.