http://www.dawitlpetros.com/home daily 1.0 2025-07-19 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1752959465755-ZPB5ZV7YLLH6U0GW9TCY/Homepage.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590354748502-RMPNT4DXS4FUK8OLL8J8/0.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1752959465755-ZPB5ZV7YLLH6U0GW9TCY/Homepage.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1395145095294-7M4WD0PZUOU9L7YWU7N4/web+12+11_30x36inches.jpg Home http://www.dawitlpetros.com/idea-of-north daily 0.75 2025-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518853543477-4JDOAEF9CAWD5S2ZQXQP/2+The+Corner.jpg The Idea of North, 2007 - The Idea of North, 2007, Archival colour prints, reflecting pool, mural, video The Idea of North aligns landscapes of North America with those of Africa as a basis for an array of objects, all of which are similarly staged in a matrix of intercultural reflexivity, appropriation, citation, and recuperation. The work is anchored on a found photograph of two Tanzanians on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and Glenn Gouldʼs 40-hour train ride on the Muskog Express from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba in 1967. The project takes multiple forms; a reflecting pool, video installation, photographs, temporary sculptures, and a wall painting and these link my travels to the austere frontiers of northern Canada and western California. By conjoining disparate cultural and geographical places as overlapping, contingent spaces whose features blend into one another, the project unmasks the seeming inauthenticities that divorce an African locality operating as a conceptual generator for aesthetic systems through which North American landscapes can be articulated. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518853543477-4JDOAEF9CAWD5S2ZQXQP/2+The+Corner.jpg The Idea of North, 2007 - The Idea of North, 2007, Archival colour prints, reflecting pool, mural, video The Idea of North aligns landscapes of North America with those of Africa as a basis for an array of objects, all of which are similarly staged in a matrix of intercultural reflexivity, appropriation, citation, and recuperation. The work is anchored on a found photograph of two Tanzanians on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and Glenn Gouldʼs 40-hour train ride on the Muskog Express from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba in 1967. The project takes multiple forms; a reflecting pool, video installation, photographs, temporary sculptures, and a wall painting and these link my travels to the austere frontiers of northern Canada and western California. By conjoining disparate cultural and geographical places as overlapping, contingent spaces whose features blend into one another, the project unmasks the seeming inauthenticities that divorce an African locality operating as a conceptual generator for aesthetic systems through which North American landscapes can be articulated. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1387484688212-ECCZKJP03U2JGEPYADNP/1+Large+view+of+space.jpg The Idea of North, 2007 - The Idea of North Installation view, Tufts University Art Galleries, 2007 The Idea of North is anchored on a found photograph of two Tanzanians on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and Glenn Gouldʼs 40-hour train ride on the Muskog Express from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba in 1967. The project takes multiple forms; a reflecting pool, video installation, photographs, temporary sculptures, and a wall painting. These forms link my travels to the austere frontiers of northern Canada and western California. By conjoining disparate cultural and geographical places as overlapping, contingent spaces whose features blend into one another, the project unmasks the seeming inauthenticities that divorce an African locality operating as a conceptual generator for aesthetic systems through which North American landscapes can be articulated. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753821492173-MYTKKDHSDCWS18T0NMF9/6+kilimanjaro.jpg The Idea of North, 2007 - Proposition 1: A Parallel Model for Physical and Conceptual Processes, Found Image, Archival digital print, 5 x 7 nches, 2007 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/sense-of-place-2013 daily 0.75 2025-08-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518840584528-I9JU2VZUWH0IEX88WH1R/Sense+of+Place+High+Res.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Sense of Place Installation view, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 2013 Chrome is a long term project that explores urban neighborhoods around the world. The work began with Harlechromes, 2009; Addischromes, 2010, Dakarchromes, 2011 and Bostonchromes in 2013. The Notations are structured on walks of discovery in which colors and their attendant objects are collected. These colors are then translated into monochromatic fields to create - Social Abstractions - works comprising photography, sculpture and painted wall murals. These Social Abstractions envelop the formal arena while offering an ambivalent reflection on urban African spaces and their historical formation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1394051428935-DL1YR57P9GNFME91HH9G/SP_MG_7631.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518840584528-I9JU2VZUWH0IEX88WH1R/Sense+of+Place+High+Res.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Sense of Place Installation view, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 2013 Chrome is a long term project that explores urban neighborhoods around the world. The work began with Harlechromes, 2009; Addischromes, 2010, Dakarchromes, 2011 and Bostonchromes in 2013. The Notations are structured on walks of discovery in which colors and their attendant objects are collected. These colors are then translated into monochromatic fields to create - Social Abstractions - works comprising photography, sculpture and painted wall murals. These Social Abstractions envelop the formal arena while offering an ambivalent reflection on urban African spaces and their historical formation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518840607361-L913TM6Y8ZT36JMC336L/Sense+of+Place+2+High+Res.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Sense of Place Installation view, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, 2013 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518841789173-0QA3FP5C9R75TRTK5LJ2/Andreas+1.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Barellas and Landscape, #1-4, Boston, MA Archival pigment prints, 30 x 40” each, 2013 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518840843518-6EX7UW2EYAOPIOR6RU9B/03_DLP_BarellasKansas_2012.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Barella & Landscape #1, Osbourne, Kansas Archival pigment prints, 30 x 80”, 2012 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518840915824-IXFBEVNNEZZKC1RTAZAM/Osbourne+3.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Barella & Landscape #3, Osbourne, Kansas Archival colour pigment print, 30 x 40”, 2012 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589934199151-VQO6O7VYHBHK7VHQB4OQ/91_SenseofPlace.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Barella & Landscape #4, Osbourne, Kansas Archival colour pigment print, 30 x 40”, 2012 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518840861838-3HPUP9HJW3P4H5UXHXMB/DLPETROS+Dyptich.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Colorscape, Coordinate #23, Ethiopia Archival pigment prints, 40 x 100”, 2012 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589932613960-5G0N0BW4NC448WXXNE5X/2_Colorscape%2CCoordinate%2323%2CEri_Eth.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Colorscape, Coordinate #21, Eritrea, Ethiopia Archival colour pigment prints, 40 x 100”, 2012 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1594848661012-6ZZ49Z78J6NL2CB7BLRO/10_DLP_%2BNotations%2Bfor%2BA%2BNew%2BPan%2BAfricanism_2013.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Notations for A New Pan Africanism Video installation for monitor, 3:33 mins, 2013 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589932614052-B2WRSDMOS6BIFQNE17Y8/4_Colourscape.jpg _Chrome, 2009-Ongoing - Colorscape, Coordinate #17 Archival pigment print, 40 x 50”, 2012 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/strategic-withdrawal-2013 daily 0.75 2025-08-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590353263999-CI4XSRZ3T4HAZ1G3UC0U/09_MG_7663.jpg Strategic Withdrawal, 2013-Ongoing - Strategic Withdrawal, (Central Sector 1900 Anglo-Italo-Ethiopia Tri-Partie Treaty) Serigraph, Henna Pigment, 20 x 24”, 2013 The figures and lines on maps that indicated the frontiers of colonial entities of Italian east Africa were decided on from thousands of kilometers away. This program which constructed a specific historical and cultural script continues to profoundly shape contemporary events in the region. Strategic Withdrawal examines these colonial era treaty maps and their deployment of arbitrary systems of territorial demarcation. Encoded within these abstract forms – rendered in an unstable dye – are contested territorial claims. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590353263999-CI4XSRZ3T4HAZ1G3UC0U/09_MG_7663.jpg Strategic Withdrawal, 2013-Ongoing - Strategic Withdrawal, (Central Sector 1900 Anglo-Italo-Ethiopia Tri-Partie Treaty) Serigraph, Henna Pigment, 20 x 24”, 2013 The figures and lines on maps that indicated the frontiers of colonial entities of Italian east Africa were decided on from thousands of kilometers away. This program which constructed a specific historical and cultural script continues to profoundly shape contemporary events in the region. Strategic Withdrawal examines these colonial era treaty maps and their deployment of arbitrary systems of territorial demarcation. Encoded within these abstract forms – rendered in an unstable dye – are contested territorial claims. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754164846444-D54EY7P6GAFQXXAJG9GA/K%C3%98S_REALISTIC_UTOPIAS-25.jpg Strategic Withdrawal, 2013-Ongoing - Strategic Withdrawal, 2013-2022 The small east African nation of Eritrea’s origins are rooted in the crucible of anti-colonial transformation and articulated through the modernist language of sovereignty and revolutionary nationalism. Its complicated relationship to the 21st-century world is the product of a specific historical trajectory that began in the 19th Century and moved through Italian colonialism, British occupation, a failed federation with Ethiopia, and a 31-year war for independence. The short post-independence era of the 1990s was marred by a boundary dispute culminating in the second Eritrea-Ethiopian War (1998-2000). Strategic Withdrawal highlights multiple narratives of departure that the complex history has generated, a series of strategic withdrawals. The first is the 19th-century account of an Abyssinian scholar’s journey to Italy, the earliest written in Tigrinya, an important literary language of the Horn. The text is emblematic of historical movements across national boundaries in multiple directions, indicative of the interdependent relationship of modernism and colonialism. The other departures are contemporary crossings across the Mediterranean towards Lampedusa, Italy, and other access points into Fortress Europe. These current migrations point to irresolvable entanglements of unstable boundaries, which continue to produce political instability, economic crisis, and large-scale departures. Strategic Withdrawal uses photography, three-dimensional cartographic forms, memorials and spatial markers (stele) to unsettle and render precarious systems of territorial demarcation and the logic that firmly secured and delineated boundaries, stemming the flow of populations and forms. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754164874899-LQ01IXO1TJIE3OVZ6348/K%C3%98S_REALISTIC_UTOPIAS-26.jpg Strategic Withdrawal, 2013-Ongoing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1394052372585-L5KNDT6FS80TA5T1ZZKY/Web+01+Petros_Install_1_2013.jpg Strategic Withdrawal, 2013-Ongoing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518901672205-I1YSYX8ACGPMQ7QXMZU1/3_MG_7665.jpg Strategic Withdrawal, 2013-Ongoing - Strategic Withdrawal (Eastern Sector 1908 Italo-Ethiopia Treaty), Serigraph, Henna Pigment, 20 x 24”, 2013 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/passages-2006 daily 0.75 2020-05-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1395021055085-57HCRHNHZ1B3JIT41NKZ/White+Cover.jpg Passage, 2006 - Passage Archival colour pigment print, 20 x 24”, 2006 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1395021055085-57HCRHNHZ1B3JIT41NKZ/White+Cover.jpg Passage, 2006 - Passage Archival colour pigment print, 20 x 24”, 2006 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/reviews daily 0.75 2022-08-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589777699393-ZYF9OVF93UXIICHEYYS3/2008_SMH_Flow_Catalogue+1.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589777699393-ZYF9OVF93UXIICHEYYS3/2008_SMH_Flow_Catalogue+1.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589778113993-6GSE2XE3K9AVR82A02KX/2009_SMH_Encodings_AIR+1.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1435189994775-9QMNQIQ7NAVYID7EIIB1/Shades+and+Passages-1.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1435190518846-2VM0FYP3S6S3PW6RWWUN/02+Petros_Bloom_SBCAF_Brochure-6.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589777704317-B0QMEFM65005AS1GVQ4N/2011_FranklinArtWork_Catalogue+1+copy.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589777713067-NTTZ0DSFYI9AAPMJHCH5/2017_Mediteraneo_Cover_Feature.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518914053853-MXIP5A9J771XBUN9QABA/walther.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589777723415-7BYM0MZHN8YCBC1VAY34/2019_ArtPapers_Feature+1+copy.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589777729147-UFHUV04E666ZMYA9NKC1/2020_Listeningtoechoes_Abridged_Catalogue+1+copy.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589777733817-GYME43EVF5I94URSQTRU/2020_Listeningtoechoes_Abridged_Catalogue+5+copy.jpg Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1659483019692-SVWCIJ3W4RW51DQ1UTVA/1_Spazio_BookCover+copy.jpg Publications http://www.dawitlpetros.com/chromes-demarcation-2011 daily 0.75 2025-11-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1393020991467-XNDB5NNXFDWHJ6OTC1Q1/Petros_overall2.jpg Addis/Dakar/Chrome, 2011 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518847147398-TYWSRGAIW61IPFVUZTUF/DLP_AR_00.jpg Addis/Dakar/Chrome, 2011 - Demarcation (Painting sea on land), Asmara Road, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Archival pigment prints, 40 x 50 inches each, 2011 Demarcations invoke my long standing intrigue with how a moving body can define—and be defined by—the physical parameters of an artwork, while also pointing to the larger cultural and historical forces that shape our experience of place. The two triptychs invites a mode of mobility that is open, provisional, and fluid, challenging conventional displays and suggesting new proximities between the body and its boundaries or thresholds. Both works are rooted in regions torn by disputes over water and territory: the Eritrea–Ethiopia conflict (1961–1992) and the Mauritania–Senegal war (1989–1991). In Painting Sea on Land, layers of water, soil, and paint come together to erase the contested border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. In Drawing a Line From Sand to Sea, a shallow mark is drawn along the shifting divide between sand and ocean, only to be swept away by the next wave. Through these symbolic gestures and their vivid use of color, the pieces ask us to reconsider the seeming permanence of lines on a map. They remind us that boundaries are never fixed but are perpetually negotiated—eroded, redrawn, and reimagined—by the forces of history, politics, and human movement. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518847254523-BBO4ZJ105333O2X3322B/DLP_PDA_00.jpg Addis/Dakar/Chrome, 2011 - Demarcation (Drawing a line from sand to sea), Pointes Des Almadies, Dakar, Senegal, Archival pigment prints, 40 x 50 inches each, 2011 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/mahber-shawate-association-of-7-2009-2011 daily 0.75 2025-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1387411950977-131QN2LPKXC88O9W9SRC/Petros_Install3_20114.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Mahber Shaw’ate (Association of 7) Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, NYC, NY, 2011 Mahber Shawʼate (Association of Seven) is a suite of photographs, cardboard box sculptures and wall murals. While the arrangements of the boxes reference minimal and early conceptual art, the boxes themselves, despite their emptiness, carry connotations of travel and migration. The project takes language as a model, specifically the Tigrinya alphabet, as used in my birthplace of Eritrea. The letters of the Tigrinya alphabet are transformed by their context; consonant letterforms are modified depending on neighboring vowels. The photographs build on this notion of contingent structure, and in so doing manifest structurally what is generally true of linguistic meaning: that it is always contingent on its context, a truth which is demonstrated by the larger structure of the project. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1387411950977-131QN2LPKXC88O9W9SRC/Petros_Install3_20114.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Mahber Shaw’ate (Association of 7) Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, NYC, NY, 2011 Mahber Shawʼate (Association of Seven) is a suite of photographs, cardboard box sculptures and wall murals. While the arrangements of the boxes reference minimal and early conceptual art, the boxes themselves, despite their emptiness, carry connotations of travel and migration. The project takes language as a model, specifically the Tigrinya alphabet, as used in my birthplace of Eritrea. The letters of the Tigrinya alphabet are transformed by their context; consonant letterforms are modified depending on neighboring vowels. The photographs build on this notion of contingent structure, and in so doing manifest structurally what is generally true of linguistic meaning: that it is always contingent on its context, a truth which is demonstrated by the larger structure of the project. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754183506322-XHZM5LVST3VTHIBFPP1P/11_30x36inches.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Single Cube Formation, No. 4, Nazareth, Ethiopia, Chromogenic print, 30 x 36 inches, 2011 Mahber Shawʼate (Association of Seven) is a suite of photographs, cardboard box sculptures, and wall murals. While the arrangements of the boxes reference minimal and early conceptual art, the boxes themselves, despite their emptiness, carry connotations of travel and migration. This complication of the legacy of these art movements by the movements of people is furthered by the projectʼs conceptual framework. Rather than working within the mathematical, permutational traditions of conceptual art, the project takes language as a model, specifically the Tigrinya alphabet, as used in my birthplace of Eritrea. The letters of the Tigrinya alphabet are transformed by their context; consonant letterforms are modified depending on neighboring vowels. The photographs build on this notion of contingent structure, and in so doing manifest structurally what is generally true of linguistic meaning: that it is always contingent on its context, a truth which is demonstrated by the larger structure of the project. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754183505901-3KAFJ3CXDMKKG4V08XH1/06_20x24inches.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Single Cube Formation, No. 5, Saskatoon, SK, Chromogenic print, 20 x 24 inches, 2011 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1597171511107-9SP4NQDDZXCMWX7MNWG2/11_30x36inches.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Single Cube Formation, No. 4, Nazareth, Ethiopia, Archival colour pigment print, 30 x 36”, 2011 Mahber Shawʼate (Association of Seven) is a suite of photographs, cardboard box sculptures and wall murals. While the arrangements of the boxes reference minimal and early conceptual art, the boxes themselves, despite their emptiness, carry connotations of travel and migration. The project takes language as a model, specifically the Tigrinya alphabet, as used in my birthplace of Eritrea. The letters of the Tigrinya alphabet are transformed by their context; consonant letterforms are modified depending on neighboring vowels. The photographs build on this notion of contingent structure, and in so doing manifest structurally what is generally true of linguistic meaning: that it is always contingent on its context, a truth which is demonstrated by the larger structure of the project. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753992648204-3QV2QI5Y7CBNBSV46Q57/08a+DLP_7_2011.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Single Cube Formation, No. 3, Santa Barbara, CA, Chromogenic print, 20 x 24 inches, 2011 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753990900920-4A4RXH1YNOG8SU27QGT0/19+DLP_7_2011.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754183508146-PS7WGEZAEG47WSZ0AYJL/12_30x36inches.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Single Cube Formation, No. 3, Marfa, TX, Chromogenic print, 30 x 36 inches, 2011 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754183508263-NOFR72CHFLC7P5JNPNDR/13_30x36inches.jpg Mahber Shaw'ate, 2009-11 - Single Cube Formation, No. 2, Santa Barbara, CA, Chromogenic print, 30 x 36 inches, 2011 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/fdfd daily 0.75 2025-07-20 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590277678780-G16F295EGZ668LXH86CW/13.jpg Addis/Chrome, 2010 - Passage (Red Sea) Wall Mural, custom red paint on wall, 800 x 280cm, 2010 Chrome is a long term project that explores urban neighborhoods around the world. The work began with Harlechromes, 2009; Addischromes, 2010, Dakarchromes, 2011 and Bostonchromes in 2013. The Notations are structured on walks of discovery in which colors and their attendant objects are collected. These colors are then translated into monochromatic fields to create - Social Abstractions - works comprising photography, sculpture and painted wall murals. These Social Abstractions envelop the formal arena while offering an ambivalent reflection on urban African spaces and their historical formation. The murals and sculptures make simultaneous allusion to methods of abstraction and to colour and patterns drawn from African sensibilities. The result is an evocation of the hybrid sensibilities theorized by Uche Okekeʼs natural synthesis. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590277678780-G16F295EGZ668LXH86CW/13.jpg Addis/Chrome, 2010 - Passage (Red Sea) Wall Mural, custom red paint on wall, 800 x 280cm, 2010 Chrome is a long term project that explores urban neighborhoods around the world. The work began with Harlechromes, 2009; Addischromes, 2010, Dakarchromes, 2011 and Bostonchromes in 2013. The Notations are structured on walks of discovery in which colors and their attendant objects are collected. These colors are then translated into monochromatic fields to create - Social Abstractions - works comprising photography, sculpture and painted wall murals. These Social Abstractions envelop the formal arena while offering an ambivalent reflection on urban African spaces and their historical formation. The murals and sculptures make simultaneous allusion to methods of abstraction and to colour and patterns drawn from African sensibilities. The result is an evocation of the hybrid sensibilities theorized by Uche Okekeʼs natural synthesis. http://www.dawitlpetros.com/harlemchrome-2009-1 daily 0.75 2025-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518904251375-RENDXJAWI9MNDLPDBIQD/16.jpg Chrome, 2009-2013 - Harlemchrome No. 2, 24 Ready found colour and exterior walls on the way around boundary Archival colour pigment prints, 20 x 24” each, 2009 Chrome is a long term project that explores urban neighborhoods around the world. The work began with Harlechromes, 2009; Addischromes, 2010, Dakarchromes, 2011 and Bostonchromes in 2013. The Notations are structured on walks of discovery in which colors and their attendant objects are collected. These colors are then translated into monochromatic fields to create - Social Abstractions - works comprising photography, sculpture and painted wall murals. These Social Abstractions envelop the formal arena while offering an ambivalent reflection on urban African spaces and their historical formation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518904251375-RENDXJAWI9MNDLPDBIQD/16.jpg Chrome, 2009-2013 - Harlemchrome No. 2, 24 Ready found colour and exterior walls on the way around boundary Archival colour pigment prints, 20 x 24” each, 2009 Chrome is a long term project that explores urban neighborhoods around the world. The work began with Harlechromes, 2009; Addischromes, 2010, Dakarchromes, 2011 and Bostonchromes in 2013. The Notations are structured on walks of discovery in which colors and their attendant objects are collected. These colors are then translated into monochromatic fields to create - Social Abstractions - works comprising photography, sculpture and painted wall murals. These Social Abstractions envelop the formal arena while offering an ambivalent reflection on urban African spaces and their historical formation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1518904302385-QE3YU6U9OAHMMX1OYF4K/14.jpg Chrome, 2009-2013 - Harlemchrome (Expansive Structure No. 1), Wall Painting, Custom Pantone latex paints, Dimensions Variable, 2009 Chrome is a long-term project that explores urban neighborhoods around the world. The work began with long walks through the neighbourhoods and around their borders. During these walks, colours and their attendant objects are collected. These colors are then translated into monochromatic fields to create Social Abstractions-works comprising photography, sculpture and painted wall murals. These Social Abstractions envelop the formal arena while offering an ambivalent reflection on urban African spaces and their historical formation. The murals and sculptures make simultaneous allusion to methods of abstraction and to colour and patterns drawn from African sensibilities. The result is an evocation of the hybrid sensibilities theorized by Uche Okekeʼs natural synthesis. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753993618534-JR3D4ZBBEW5QO4HX4ZZ5/02.jpg Chrome, 2009-2013 - Pass(age) (A meditation on questions of semblance, Part 2), Addis Ababa, Wall Mural, custom red paint on wall, 800 x 280cm, 2010 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754161914510-GZRK2G2JXZJ6S2MWXKEX/Dakar.jpg Chrome, 2009-2013 - Colourscape_Coordinate #5, (Dakar, Senegal), 40 x 50 inches, Archival pigment print, 2012 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754162467821-EHKJPPUEUZMYIMAX112T/2b_Colorscape%2CCoordinate%2321%2CEri_Eth.jpg Chrome, 2009-2013 - (Detail) Colourscape, Coordinate #21, (Eritrea, Ethiopia), 40 x 50 inches, Archival pigment print, 2013 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754162259423-MMBNVES7GC80JI5C1Q92/6_Landscape_3%2COsbourne%2CKansas.jpg Chrome, 2009-2013 - Barella & Landscape #3, (Osbourne, KS), 30 x 40 inches, Archival pigment print, 2012
 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/new-gallery-1 daily 0.75 2025-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1607046377028-U3804938B0L5O129BDZ4/UB+Anderson+Dawit+Petros+10-21-202039225-proof2.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Spectre (La Teleferica), 4 panels each 6’ x 4’ x 4.25”, Archival pigment prints, CNC router etching, smoked gray Plexiglass, 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1607046377028-U3804938B0L5O129BDZ4/UB+Anderson+Dawit+Petros+10-21-202039225-proof2.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Spectre (La Teleferica), 4 panels each 6’ x 4’ x 4.25”, Archival pigment prints, CNC router etching, smoked gray Plexiglass, 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753998633117-BIE13N5BFS0HSNGOXGOB/UB+Anderson+Dawit+Petros+10-21-202039194.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- Spazio Disponibile – Italian for ‘available space’ addresses the neglected histories of Italian colonialism in Northeast Africa. The project triangulates colonial and migratory spaces in Eritrea, Italy, and Canada, complicating transnational maps of mobility and prompting questions about excluded memories. The project transforms archival materials collected over seven years, including maps, postcards, and photographs, to signal fractured and fabricated histories. The result is a multimedia installation of screenprints, photographs, sculptural works, a multi-channel film, and a sound. These works focus on built forms, including architecture, industries, and infrastructures to study how built forms visualize cultural ideologies. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753748053539-78M2RSKKWR970E8H94QF/8_2021-09-03-BradleyErtaskiran031_MF_DLP.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - La questione Africcana Serigraph, Coventry Rag, Plexiglass, Pine, Walnut, Plinth 16” x 16” x 48”; Frame 45” x 63” x 1.25, 2020 Spazio Disponibile – Italian for ‘available space’ – is an allusion to the vacant advertising spaces in Rivista Coloniale, a widely circulated early 20th-century publication and the official organ of the italian colonial project. Spazio Disponibile establishes the triangulation of geographies - Italy, the Horn of Africa, North America - that my work has inhabited for a decade. The formal language of screenprints, photographs, sculpture, film and sound, examines architecture and infrastructures of Italian colonization. Working with historical materials that connect the italian presence in Canada and Eritrea between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the project analyses how built forms visualize cultural ideologies and histories that are displaced over time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753748496788-WM8LU0AOWZV65TF6XV14/africcana.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - La questione Affricana, Serigraphy, Coventry Rag, Plexiglass, pine, walnut Frame 45 x 63 x 1.25 inches; plinth 16” x 16” x 48” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754178381692-SYWA09O82NWE7YUHL6PO/UB+Anderson+Dawit+Petros+10-21-202039225.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Spectre (La Teleferica), Archival pigment prints, CNC router etching, smoked gray Plexiglass 4 panels, each 6 feet x 4 feet x 4.25 inches, , 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754178290187-EOF25PB1PMMVN89XU9L2/2021-09-03-BradleyErtaskiran062.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Preoccupations (Rivista Coloniale, 1906-1943), Serigraphs, Arnheim paper, 38 prints, 22 x 30 inches each, 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1607047272405-VMO89OT7KC4KGBDH7RQR/UB+Anderson+Dawit+Petros+10-21-202039170-Proof2.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Spazio Disponibile Installation view, University Buffalo Art Galleries, September 24 - May 15, 2021 Spazio Disponibile examines the links between colonization, migrations and modernism. The term – Italian for 'Available Space’ – scrutinizes historical gaps in European memory, particularly that of modern Italy. Alluding to vacant advertising sections that appeared in Rivista Coloniale, a widely circulated early 20th century magazine and organ of the Italian colonial project, the title is also a reference to the colonial gaze that viewed the lands of Africa as ‘available’ space to occupy and exploit. The project reflects ongoing research into the complex layers of colonial and postcolonial histories connecting East Africa, Europe and North America. Composed of a multimedia installation of serigraphs, photographs, sculptural works, a film and soundscape, the works highlight the ties between the contemporary resurgence of nationalism and a displaced colonial past. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1607046327068-HUFHDP5GDPIG7EFIXBWK/UB+Anderson+Dawit+Petros+10-21-202039170-Proof2.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Spazio Disponibile Installation view, University Buffalo Art Galleries, Buffalo, NY, 2020 Spazio Disponibile examines the links between colonization, migrations and modernism. The term – Italian for 'Available Space’ – scrutinizes historical gaps in European memory, particularly that of modern Italy. Alluding to vacant advertising sections that appeared in Rivista Coloniale, a widely circulated early 20th century magazine and organ of the Italian colonial project, the title is also a reference to the colonial gaze that viewed the lands of Africa as ‘available’ space to occupy and exploit. The project reflects ongoing research into the complex layers of colonial and postcolonial histories connecting East Africa, Europe and North America. Composed of a multimedia installation of serigraphs, photographs, sculptural works, a film and soundscape, the works highlight the ties between the contemporary resurgence of nationalism and a displaced colonial past. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1593790724436-QALPRGU3K790BW1QL7AO/8.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Spazio Disponibile Installation view, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, ON, 2020 Spazio Disponibile examines the links between colonization, migrations and modernism. The term – Italian for 'Available Space’ – scrutinizes historical gaps in European memory, particularly that of modern Italy. Alluding to vacant advertising sections that appeared in Rivista Coloniale, a widely circulated early 20th century magazine and organ of the Italian colonial project, the title is also a reference to the colonial gaze that viewed the lands of Africa as ‘available’ space to occupy and exploit. The project reflects ongoing research into the complex layers of colonial and postcolonial histories connecting East Africa, Europe and North America. Composed of a multimedia installation of serigraphs, photographs, sculptural works, a film and soundscape, the works highlight the ties between the contemporary resurgence of nationalism and a displaced colonial past. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1580708186225-KMDXWG11ES7NC7ZQDVD0/12.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589769736069-24JAO6MWD1JJYVIK6GBF/05_DLP_SpazioDisponible_2020.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - Spazio Disponible Installation view, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, ON, 2020 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589769773732-OHFHQHDYQLK1DIBRDVXI/01_DLP_SpazioDisponible_2020.jpg Spazio Disponibile 2020- - La questione Italianna, La questione Africcana Serigraphs, Coventry Rag, Plexiglass, Pine, Walnut, Plinth 16” x 16” x 48”; Frame 45” x 63” x 1.25, 2020 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/sea-in-its-thirst-is-trembling-2019 daily 0.75 2025-08-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589210560798-LWDGER6BF26B0FM2R2NP/Oslow_INstall.jpg Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling 2019 - The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling Installation view, Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway, 2020 Cuba and Eritrea are two sites whose geographical distance belies numerous affinities. This project connects these locations and histories through the migration of music and sonic politics. The Sea in its Thirst is Trembling, is a video that operated alongside a collaborative live performance. Musicians from the Ashé Olorun group performed for both versions of the work, while an interview with the legendary Matancero sculptor Agustín Drake Aldama comprised the remainder of the video. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589210560798-LWDGER6BF26B0FM2R2NP/Oslow_INstall.jpg Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling 2019 - The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling Installation view, Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway, 2020 Cuba and Eritrea are two sites whose geographical distance belies numerous affinities. This project connects these locations and histories through the migration of music and sonic politics. The Sea in its Thirst is Trembling, is a video that operated alongside a collaborative live performance. Musicians from the Ashé Olorun group performed for both versions of the work, while an interview with the legendary Matancero sculptor Agustín Drake Aldama comprised the remainder of the video. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1589853873146-27LMIV4MLL9HYGW1QG6E/2_DLP_ElMar_2019_1.jpg Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling 2019 - The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling, Live performance, San Juan River, Matanzas, Cuba, 2019 The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling is a collaborative sound intervention conceived for Ríos Intermitentes (Intermittent Rivers) during the 13th Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba. I worked closely with local musicians and artists over the period of a year to create a work that is situated between Cuba and the Horn of Africa. Musicians from the Ashé Olorun group performed for both versions of the work (live performance and video), while an interview with the legendary Matancero sculptor Agustin Drake Aldama complemented the strong cross-cultural undercurrent of the work. The live performance took place along the San Juan River, under a bridge, which ultimately connected musical traditions, histories, and cultures. The lead drummer, Hiran Polledo Diaz, who was seated along the wall of the riverbank, played with and in response to the drummers Osmays Rodriguez Diaz and Reinaldo Adazabal and the singer Mayline Carballo Bidez, who performed on a small fishing boat that circled the river and out into the bay of Matanzas. The title of the work The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling, references Édouard Glissant’s concept of trembling thinking, and the importance of cultural multiplicity and exchange. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1594853075461-NK3CWCZMOBHGKSWMVSY4/33.jpg Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling 2019 - The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling Single channel video, HD, 10:45 mins, 2019 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/black-athena-collective-2015 daily 0.75 2020-08-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590352204098-5PU5ZHXSTHU5MLGHPBH2/0.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Black Athena Collective Black Athena Collective is a research and artistic laboratory for experimentation that engages political discourse and practices of spatial construction connected to the Red Sea region from Eritrea to Egypt. Through multi-disciplinary perspectives including geography, archeology and history, Black Athene Collective employ writing, performance-lectures and visual strategies to interrogate histories of the region and initiate new dynamics of history. The Collective was co-founded by Heba Y. Amin (EGY) and Dawit L. Petros (ERI/CAN) in 2015. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590352204098-5PU5ZHXSTHU5MLGHPBH2/0.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Black Athena Collective Black Athena Collective is a research and artistic laboratory for experimentation that engages political discourse and practices of spatial construction connected to the Red Sea region from Eritrea to Egypt. Through multi-disciplinary perspectives including geography, archeology and history, Black Athene Collective employ writing, performance-lectures and visual strategies to interrogate histories of the region and initiate new dynamics of history. The Collective was co-founded by Heba Y. Amin (EGY) and Dawit L. Petros (ERI/CAN) in 2015. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590345581075-QZHAL2AJ8EGQZVJMG0R7/1_Nowehereisaplace.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Nowhere Is A Place Artist Book, 10.5 x 14”, 2015 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590346681797-WFCGT4Q4P24KE8NV75GQ/3a_Nowehereisaplace.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Nowhere Is A Place Artist Book, 10x5 x 14”, 2015 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590346682246-EJ460PKKE0PBSYRPG8BQ/2a_Nowehereisaplace.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Nowhere Is A Place Artist Book, 10.5 x 14”, 2015 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590280604391-WK3HJ76DBOXSZ2J1IN8F/3_1895_Taulud_Vista_dal_mare.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Archeology of the Image 2, Notation 1, Massawa, 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590280595851-TBVM8Z3A0PVZP4ACV6WB/2_WhiteNile_1911.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Archeology of the Image 5, Notation 1, White Nile, 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590280558084-4ISN8CJSQJT49H2Z6SGI/26%2627_BAC_2016.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - Black Athena Collective is a research and artistic laboratory for experimentation that engages political discourse and practices of spatial construction connected to the Red Sea region from Eritrea to Egypt. It looks specifically at archival documents and a re-writing of historical narratives on the various frameworks of space in relation to errant bodies in the region. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590280586301-7PGXD6WQ2SH50PRQWHHG/1_AnnesleyBay_Cropped.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - - Archeology of the Image 4, Notation 1, The Bay of Zula, 2018 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1590280526772-IU3ZRFUTSBL1M7Q4NGFU/1.jpg Black Athena Collective, 2015 - http://www.dawitlpetros.com/as-the-nile-flows-2024 daily 0.75 2025-08-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1752961861935-X5CAL2F3YLFQSD3D2DZ5/Lefty.jpg As the Nile Flows, 2024- - As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks, 2024- As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks is a hypothetical re-reading of a historical military expedition of the Nile River in Egypt from 1884-1885. This British-led expedition included 379 ‘Voyageurs’ from across Canada and Quebec including French Canadian, Western Canadian and First Nation people who were transported on a fleet of converted whaleboats. Their objective was to reach Khartoum – the capital of Sudan, which was at the time an Egyptian province – to save its British Governor General. Major-General Charles Gordon had been attacked by forces inspired by the call to liberate Sudan from foreign control. The project invites visitors to ‘textually travel’ through the records and artworks on display – some gathered and some newly-created in response to archives of shipping and empire. Through doing so, I seek to interrogate elements of the past which are simultaneously hidden and present in both material practices and the psyche, and in visible and invisible places. I reflects on themes of control, power, movement and travel, making connections between events, diverse communities, languages and places frequently thought of as remote from each other. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1752961861935-X5CAL2F3YLFQSD3D2DZ5/Lefty.jpg As the Nile Flows, 2024- - As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks, 2024- As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks is a hypothetical re-reading of a historical military expedition of the Nile River in Egypt from 1884-1885. This British-led expedition included 379 ‘Voyageurs’ from across Canada and Quebec including French Canadian, Western Canadian and First Nation people who were transported on a fleet of converted whaleboats. Their objective was to reach Khartoum – the capital of Sudan, which was at the time an Egyptian province – to save its British Governor General. Major-General Charles Gordon had been attacked by forces inspired by the call to liberate Sudan from foreign control. The project invites visitors to ‘textually travel’ through the records and artworks on display – some gathered and some newly-created in response to archives of shipping and empire. Through doing so, I seek to interrogate elements of the past which are simultaneously hidden and present in both material practices and the psyche, and in visible and invisible places. I reflects on themes of control, power, movement and travel, making connections between events, diverse communities, languages and places frequently thought of as remote from each other. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754165174498-BEZLCQGH4ZEDTBO7B0GC/LB_2025_171.jpg As the Nile Flows, 2024- - As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks, Hornby Library, Liverpool Central Library, 2025 As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks is a hypothetical re-reading of a historical military expedition of the Nile River in Egypt from 1884-1885. This British-led expedition included 379 ‘Voyageurs’ from across Canada and Québec, including French Canadian, Western Canadian, and First Nation people who were transported on a fleet of converted whaleboats. Their objective was to reach Khartoum – the capital of Sudan, which was at the time an Egyptian province – to save its British Governor General. Major-General Charles Gordon had been attacked by forces inspired by the call to liberate Sudan from foreign control. The research begins with four primary accounts written by expedition participants and expands into maps, illustrations, photographs, musical transcriptions, and travelogues produced in Canada, Britain, Egypt, and Sudan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am particularly interested in how African and North American indigeneities were shaped through contact and exchange under the pressures of imperial conquest. I focus my investigations on imperial libraries, whose holdings reflect the epistemologies of colonial powers contending for power in this historical era. This project took shape first during my time as an artist-in-residence at the Special Collections of the University of Saskatchewan, and then as a research-in-progress presentation at Québec City’s Morrin Cultural Centre for the Québec Biennial 2024. It developed further through a residency with Liverpool John Moores University and exploration of Liverpool’s archives and collections of shipping and empire. It is presented as a work-in-progress at the Liverpool Biennial in 2025. The project unfolds through performance, music, film, artist books, photography, and sculpture—some historical, some newly created in response to imperial archives. In each biennial, As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks establishes a “library within the library,” inviting visitors to conduct their own research using selected archival materials. Takeaway images linked to QR codes allow audiences to continue their investigations beyond the exhibition walls. By inviting audiences to “textually travel” through the records of empire and works created in response to these, the project enables a reconsideration of elements of the past which are simultaneously hidden and present in both material practices and the psyche, and in visible and invisible places. As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks reflects on themes of control, power, movement, and travel, making connections between events, diverse communities, languages, and places frequently thought of as remote from each other. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754165177794-C8NLJ13XHCVIRBH0A15T/LB_2025_180.jpg As the Nile Flows, 2024- - (Detail) As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks, Hornby Library, Liverpool Central Library, 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754165187456-QBI8XBTE951125DDVNIC/_DSC1244.jpg As the Nile Flows, 2024- - As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks, Morin Cultural Center, Québec, QC, 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753750446851-VWKMWF4CSOE9AK1X3XLL/33333.jpg As the Nile Flows, 2024- - (Film Still) Emergent Formations, HD video, Stereo, 15:00 minutes http://www.dawitlpetros.com/prospetto-a-mare-2021 daily 0.75 2025-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753746649025-OX4SZ4A4DTLB9T4BUJFJ/PPPAM.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Untitled (Itineraries of Dispersal, Burnham Park, Chicago, I), Archival monochrome print, 20 x 26 inches, 2024 Prospetto a Mare adds the trans-Atlantic crossings of General Italo Balbo (1933) and itineraries of Ala Littoria (1934-1941) – Fascist Italy’s civil airline to my long-term exploration of the links between colonialization, migrations, and modernism in Eritrea, Italy, and North America. The sky and airplane—as a visual, cognitive, and political dimension—function as the connective tissue for multimedia works that reflect on discovery, display, and destruction. The works in this project lend themselves to upending the vision, actions, and material language of the scopic regime of facism as displayed on the occasion and aftermath of Balbo’s flight. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753746649025-OX4SZ4A4DTLB9T4BUJFJ/PPPAM.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Untitled (Itineraries of Dispersal, Burnham Park, Chicago, I), Archival monochrome print, 20 x 26 inches, 2024 Prospetto a Mare adds the trans-Atlantic crossings of General Italo Balbo (1933) and itineraries of Ala Littoria (1934-1941) – Fascist Italy’s civil airline to my long-term exploration of the links between colonialization, migrations, and modernism in Eritrea, Italy, and North America. The sky and airplane—as a visual, cognitive, and political dimension—function as the connective tissue for multimedia works that reflect on discovery, display, and destruction. The works in this project lend themselves to upending the vision, actions, and material language of the scopic regime of facism as displayed on the occasion and aftermath of Balbo’s flight. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754178785840-UP9F4Z09BQXOQQS7YWJS/2021-09-03-BradleyErtaskiran029.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Between departures, returns and excesses of image, Part I, II, III, Serigraphs on canvas, 35 x 44 inches each, 2021 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754180891564-3M0A4ZNLVXERSJ1IKDBM/Dawit+L.+Petros_2025_Spectral+Fragment%2C+VI_Bradley+Ertaskiran_Paul+Litherland_1.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Spectral Fragment, VI (Enchanted Island), Archival pigment print, CNC etching on smoked gray plexiglass, 40 x 52 x 4 inches, 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754180889217-IPQHMEAANZ3OMMDXMGGQ/Dawit+L.+Petros_2025_Spectral+Fragment%2C+V_Bradley+Ertaskiran_Paul+Litherland_1.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Spectral Fragment, V (Sky Ride), Archival pigment print, CNC etching on smoked gray plexiglass, two panels, each 30 x 40 x 4 inches, 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754180885757-5VXZBO42JXHFG47DWDN0/Dawit+L.+Petros_2025_Spectral+Fragment%2C+III_Bradley+Ertaskiran_Paul+Litherland_1.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Spectral Fragment, III (Savoia Marchetti), Serigraph on Coventry Rag paper, 42.50 x 29.75 inches, 2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754178782411-UTJTDOAO3343XD9ICC9N/1_Istruzioni_quad.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Istruzioni (Transits, Trajectories, Invisible Networks), Part I-IV, Serigraphs on Arnhem paper, 22 x 30 inches each, 2021-2024. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754181083995-K5X9CCOEEBH3B61KED1F/Dawit+L.+Petros_2025_Gold%2C+Black%2C+Afterlives_Bradley+Ertaskiran_Jean-Michael+Seminaro_17.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - Recollections (Contrasting Notions), Serigraphs on Arnhem paper, 22 x 30 inches each, 2023-2025 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754180357300-LSQNCY2SGIM27EK9SISD/Dawit+L.+Petros_2025_What+comes+into+being+%28Ricochet%29_Bradley+Ertaskiran_Paul+Litherland_1.jpg Prospetto a Mare, 2021- - What comes into being (Ricochet), Mylar on aluminum, Archival pigment print on aluminum, 52 x 40 inches each, 2025 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/total-instance-of-reflexivity-2008 daily 0.75 2025-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753822988987-CK6TP9EB3AOFUC49M4A7/Petros_install_AGA_2008.jpg Total Instance of Reflexivity, 2008 - A Total Instance of Reflexivity, Sigeneity, Eritrea/Naivasha, Kenya, C-Prints, Plywood & Black Plexiglass, Portraits & Black Mirrors 20 x 24 x 4 inches each, Landscapes 48 x 60 x 6 inches each, , 200 A Total Instance of Reflexivity reconfigures two traditions of glass/optic devices in art. The Claude or Black Mirrors of 18th-19th century Europe and Souwer-underglass painting genre of Senegal. The work consists of portraits that depict me from the side, black Plexiglass panels, and two large landscape photographs of East Africaʼs Rift Valley. The piece is my version of a rügenfigure image. Unlike David Casper Friedrichʼs rügenfigure in Wander Above the Sea of Fog, the rügenfigure in A Total Instance of Reflexivity looks into a black void. This void is a remembrance of a place; unrepresentable in that it exists in memory, and its contours and features are different for each person. The landscape that the figure should be contemplating is in a separate panel, disconnected from the view that the rügenfigure-and by extension the viewer of the work-would traditionally be gazing at. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1753822988987-CK6TP9EB3AOFUC49M4A7/Petros_install_AGA_2008.jpg Total Instance of Reflexivity, 2008 - A Total Instance of Reflexivity, Sigeneity, Eritrea/Naivasha, Kenya, C-Prints, Plywood & Black Plexiglass, Portraits & Black Mirrors 20 x 24 x 4 inches each, Landscapes 48 x 60 x 6 inches each, , 200 A Total Instance of Reflexivity reconfigures two traditions of glass/optic devices in art. The Claude or Black Mirrors of 18th-19th century Europe and Souwer-underglass painting genre of Senegal. The work consists of portraits that depict me from the side, black Plexiglass panels, and two large landscape photographs of East Africaʼs Rift Valley. The piece is my version of a rügenfigure image. Unlike David Casper Friedrichʼs rügenfigure in Wander Above the Sea of Fog, the rügenfigure in A Total Instance of Reflexivity looks into a black void. This void is a remembrance of a place; unrepresentable in that it exists in memory, and its contours and features are different for each person. The landscape that the figure should be contemplating is in a separate panel, disconnected from the view that the rügenfigure-and by extension the viewer of the work-would traditionally be gazing at. http://www.dawitlpetros.com/the-strangers-notebook-201617 daily 0.75 2025-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754160080990-5GHGAU3UMEIILJX6Z01U/20_DLP_TSNB_2016.jpg The Stranger's Notebook, 2016-17 - Untitled (Distance) Cap Spartel, Morocco, Archival pigment print, 40 x 50 inches, 2016 The Stranger's Notebook encompasses a sprawling journey across Africa and Europe. The multidisciplinary project – photography, moving image, objects, and sound – draws from work made during a thirteen-month road trip from Nigeria to Morocco to Southern Europe between 2014 and 2015. The series includes works made in cities like Bamako in Mali, Nouakchott in Mauritania, Dakar in Senegal, and Catania in Sicily. The project's title makes reference to the French philosopher Albert Camus' novel L'Etranger (1942), and how Camus understands and communicates "the experience of outsiderness". The Stranger's Notebook also draws upon the German sociologist Georg Simmel's ideas of the 'paradoxical stranger'. "If wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of the "stranger" presents the unity, as it were, of these two characteristics," Simmel wrote in his seminal essay. However, it is Fesseha Giyorgis, an Abyssinian cultural figure widely regarded as the father of Tigrinya literature, who formed the basis of the project's framework. Giyorgis wrote a travelogue, "About the Author's Journey from Ethiopia to Italy and the Impressions Made on Him by His Stay in That Country in Tigrinya" (1895), in which he chronicles his travels from Massawa, on the Red Sea coast, to Italy, where he lived and worked for five years. Giyorgis' text provides a counterpoint to contemporary narratives of migration and challenges the legacy of European colonialism against which these narratives continue to unfold. The Stranger's Notebook: attempts to synthesize these texts to examine the complexity of migratory movements within Africa, questioning the privileging of certain narratives of migration over others. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754160080990-5GHGAU3UMEIILJX6Z01U/20_DLP_TSNB_2016.jpg The Stranger's Notebook, 2016-17 - Untitled (Distance) Cap Spartel, Morocco, Archival pigment print, 40 x 50 inches, 2016 The Stranger's Notebook encompasses a sprawling journey across Africa and Europe. The multidisciplinary project – photography, moving image, objects, and sound – draws from work made during a thirteen-month road trip from Nigeria to Morocco to Southern Europe between 2014 and 2015. The series includes works made in cities like Bamako in Mali, Nouakchott in Mauritania, Dakar in Senegal, and Catania in Sicily. The project's title makes reference to the French philosopher Albert Camus' novel L'Etranger (1942), and how Camus understands and communicates "the experience of outsiderness". The Stranger's Notebook also draws upon the German sociologist Georg Simmel's ideas of the 'paradoxical stranger'. "If wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of the "stranger" presents the unity, as it were, of these two characteristics," Simmel wrote in his seminal essay. However, it is Fesseha Giyorgis, an Abyssinian cultural figure widely regarded as the father of Tigrinya literature, who formed the basis of the project's framework. Giyorgis wrote a travelogue, "About the Author's Journey from Ethiopia to Italy and the Impressions Made on Him by His Stay in That Country in Tigrinya" (1895), in which he chronicles his travels from Massawa, on the Red Sea coast, to Italy, where he lived and worked for five years. Giyorgis' text provides a counterpoint to contemporary narratives of migration and challenges the legacy of European colonialism against which these narratives continue to unfold. The Stranger's Notebook: attempts to synthesize these texts to examine the complexity of migratory movements within Africa, questioning the privileging of certain narratives of migration over others. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52afc0ece4b0ee34bfdb2553/1754161411385-8SWABIFKGEVXA9JNNAOY/5_BUS_LAT_montrealfinalprint+copy.jpg The Stranger's Notebook, 2016-17 - (Detail) A series of complicated ambivalences, Bamako, Mali Archival color pigment prints, 20 x 25 inches, 2016 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/contact daily 0.75 2013-12-19 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/curriculumvitae daily 0.75 2025-08-02 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/news daily 0.75 2026-03-25 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/info daily 0.75 2025-12-08 http://www.dawitlpetros.com/as-the-nile-w daily 0.75 2025-06-04