Art for Ethiopia’s Sake: A Poster for Fano
Today, I posted on social media this composition of mine, shown above, done in charcoal, conté, ordinary pencil, and colored pencils. I don’t know what to title it, and maybe one of you out there can name it. It took days to complete, and I thought maybe I should explain why I made this piece of art, what I intended it to mean, and what I hope will happen with it.
I had been thinking for some time about trying to make something special artistically. Something visual for the cause of Fano, Ethiopia’s militia units who are heroically trying to help persecuted Amhara and indeed, free all of Ethiopia from Abiy Ahmed’s regime. There is some digital and obviously AI-generated art out there, some of it good, some of it frankly awful. Here’s one of my favorite images:
This is, aesthetically speaking, gorgeous, at least to me. But I noticed something early on with most of the — well, let’s just call them what they are, pieces of propaganda art. Art with the purpose of promoting the cause, stirring the soul.
I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, let me say I don’t see any issue in creating such art as propaganda. The bad stuff is usually laughably obvious and can be dismissed, the good stuff stays in the cultural imagination. There’s a long history of such art, with some paintings even winding up as treasured works in museums. You got Liberty Leading the People, and yes, I get that “Marianne” here as she’s known, is supposed to conjure up associations with Greek and Roman goddesses, but it still ends up as a squad of guys following a woman with her breasts out. Hmm, you’d think the artist Delacroix could have made the same point with a generous yet still discreet neckline. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front would be proud because hey, there’s a child soldier immediately to her left.
The whole composition is over-the-top but not nearly as ridiculous as The Death of General Wolfe after the Battle of the Plaines of Abraham in Quebec.
In case you don’t know, several of the historical figures depicted around Wolfe in the painting by Benjamin West weren’t even there when Wolfe died, while some weren’t even at the battle! West didn’t even bother to paint them in the right clothing for the time.
Which brings us back to trying to create a grand composition for Fano. As much as I have tried to be a conscientious journalist in covering Ethiopia and a friend to the Amhara people in their time of need, I knew that the composition I would come up with would still be in the European “tradition” of these kinds of works above. I haven’t mastered painting, and let’s just say my experiments with acrylics have had… ahem…dubious results. Here is part of a very old composition from about 20 years ago. I know, I know. Ecch. But in my defense, I can say that someone did express a wish to buy this thing, which was part of a triptych, except the paintings already belonged to someone else.
For this modern composition, I wanted to work in a medium in which I felt more confident but still do a picture with grand sweep. I had always been comfortable and had achieved some nice successes with pencils and charcoals. But then there’s that issue that bugged me about the propaganda art put out so far for Fano. Nothing terribly wrong with it, and I’m not really criticizing, but I noticed…
In most of the depictions of Fano, it’s just the heroic idealization of the soldiers. There’s little to no connection between the soldiers and the people they’re trying to help.
This is why my composition is different. Not to give myself airs, but I wanted to tell a story in this picture — in fact, multiple stories, but leave much up to the interpretation of the viewer. The use of perspective was tricky because I wanted our heroes to literally come over the hill and find a group of vulnerable Amhara, perhaps they’re internally displaced persons, you decide.
So, in the foreground you have the cluster of young women and children, and you can see the agony on one young woman’s face, comforted by a friend, who spots in that instant the Fano soldiers arriving.
I have no idea if it’ll be controversial — and I hope that it isn’t — that I depicted at least one of the Fano soldiers as having been wounded and lost a leg. He’s helped by his comrade. These men and women aren’t super beings, they’re mortal yet courageous, and I wanted to include an illustration of sacrifice. All of the Fano in the picture are based, in fact, on photos of real Fano soldiers, and so are the civilians, though sometimes I have made composites out of the portraits to protect individuals’ identities.
To make propaganda art is to send a message, but if you want to make any art that lasts, you have to aspire to something beyond that single visual or textual argument and to just being a hack. Which is why there are “moments” in this piece where you don’t know what’s going on — and I’m not going to explain them for you. We don’t know exactly why the older gentleman is passing a traditional shield to the Fano soldier at the center, though I think its symbolism is pretty clear. And in the right foreground, the young woman in the traditional dress runs towards a female Fano soldier. Originally, I had in mind the young woman running towards a relative who would also have her arms stretched out in turn for her — a reunion. To be honest, I couldn’t find a good enough photo reference, and the positioning of the figures would have been awkward. Then it struck me that drawing this would have been ecch, too treacle.
Instead, she runs towards… a friend? A sister? A cousin? But the female Fano soldier doesn’t see her yet. Or maybe she ignores her. Maybe the soldier is lost in her own thoughts, having just come from a hard battle. You make up your own story and decide.
As I stated before, I haven’t titled this piece, and so I invite you out there to suggest a title. Put your suggestions on X or Facebook and tag me on the posts. If there is an outstanding choice that’s very popular, I’ll likely go with that one, and that’s how the picture will be known.
The original art is sitting in my apartment, and when I took the photo, I didn’t notice two eraser shavings just beneath the young woman’s bare right foot. I’ve swept them away, of course, and now signed the composition.
But it would be nice — assuming Ethiopians believe the art deserves it — for the picture to be hung somewhere and put on display. At a diaspora organization’s meeting hall, in an Ethiopian cultural center… some place.
So, I am offering it up for auction. The only condition on purchasing the art is that it has to be publicly displayed where anyone can come see it for a minimum of five years, and that rights of reproduction of the image (the digital photo, that is, or its use in other works) are retained by me.
Two thirds of the final bid will go towards helping Amhara through a respected charity or organization that I’ve checked is putting the funds to good use and reaching the people who need it.
If nobody’s interested in buying the picture, okay, fine, but I see it as another way to raise funds for the Amhara cause. Most organizations know how to reach me, so I hope at least some of you will contact me.
This is Fano as I see it: courageous but especially heroic in its connection to the ordinary people, those being persecuted, put at risk, murdered, and in danger of extinction.
My hope is that other artists will produce more complex, nuanced art to get the message of Amhara Genocide out there. This will be art that lasts “more than a day” and a few dozen likes on social media. It will be art that creates lasting and moving contributions to Ethiopian culture.
