Elen, your art seems to arise from an intimate, almost spiritual urge. When did you first realise that art would be your primary way of communicating with the world?
Yes, that is very true – my art really does arise from an intimate, almost spiritual impulse. Art and nature became my main source of support during a difficult period of my life. As a teenager, I underwent a long treatment for a serious oncological illness, and it was drawing, along with my fascination for botany and entomology, that helped me get through that experience. Over time, they became not just pastimes, but the most important and inspiring aspects of my life.
I remember very clearly the moment after my recovery, when I felt a profound loss of meaning in many things around me. At that time, when I was about sixteen, I told myself that painting and the study of nature were the two essential paths I wanted to dedicate my life to.
Your painting moves between scientific observation and mystical imagination.
How does your fascination with botany and entomology coexist with the symbolic and spiritual tension that permeates your work?
Yes, I myself find it fascinating to observe how scientific curiosity and spiritual perception intertwine in my work. On the one hand, I look at plants with great interest, studying their forms and structures, but when I paint them from memory, they are no longer literal depictions. They become echoes of real plants, their symbols rather than exact copies.
It is also important for me to depict the human figure within nature. In my portraits, emotions are not always shown directly, but I feel there is a kind of spiritual contemplation present in them. This state is very close to me personally, and I believe that in today’s hurried rhythm of life, we all lack precisely this experience – the ability to observe, to listen to, and to gaze deeply into nature.
In your paintings, one senses a continuous osmosis between body and landscape, between inner experience and the natural world. How autobiographical is your creative process, and at what point does personal experience transform into a symbol?
In my work, body and landscape merge naturally, because for me inner experience is always closely connected with nature. Personal experience is indeed present in my creative process, but once it passes through the language of painting, it ceases to belong only to me. It transforms into universal images and symbols that can resonate with every viewer.
Born in the North Caucasus and educated between Moscow and France, your career spans very different worlds. Does the idea of ‘roots’ still play a role in your work, or do you feel compelled to keep moving and dislocating yourself to generate new visions?
Yes, indeed, the North Caucasus, Moscow, and the French Alps are three very different worlds, each of them significant for me in its own way and opening new horizons. I feel that moving and relocating allows me not only to discover new things but also to see more clearly what I had already encountered before. For example, in the Rhône-Alpes region I have come across insects I first knew from the North Caucasus, and I find that both surprising and symbolic.
For me, it is therefore less about returning to my roots and more about exploring new territories both external and internal.
The female figure, in your paintings, is never just a body, but a threshold, an enigmatic presence. What does the image of the feminine represent for you today, and how do you explore it in your practice?
First of all, the feminine is close to me because it feels more familiar. At the same time, I am deeply interested in the theme of blurred boundaries – the presence of the feminine within the masculine and the masculine within the feminine. What matters most to me is that space where the boundaries dissolve, where a person is freed from imposed gender roles and stereotypes and is able to embrace both sides – the masculine and the feminine.
It is precisely this state of in-between that I try to explore in my portraits: not an obvious opposition, but the subtle zone of transition and union.
Nature in your work is alive, almost sacred – not a backdrop, but a voice. How do you build this connection between landscape and inner states, between the visible and invisible world?
For me, the depiction of nature is an inseparable part of painting. My figures are often shown surrounded by nature, not occupied with anything, and not distracted. It is important for me to emphasize this moment of presence and contemplation.
Today, people increasingly distance themselves from nature, enclosing themselves in urban spaces where it becomes merely a controlled decoration. In my paintings, however, the central dialogue unfolds precisely between human and nature. It is an invisible yet tangible dialogue, and for me it carries a special significance.
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At the vibrant heart of contemporary African art, Aïda Muluneh stands out as a luminous and revolutionary presence – an artist who, through her profound and poetic vision, rewrites the continent’s visual narrative. Her photographs are not mere images but real doors wide open to the soul of an authentic, complex Africa, rich in contrasts and of a poignant beauty. Each shot is an invitation to look beyond the surface, to immerse yourself in a reality made of intertwined stories, myths, and ancestral memories, yet also infused with modernity and future-forward thinking.
Born in Addis Abeba in 1974, Aïda Muluneh experienced a cosmopolitan childhood, moving between Ethiopia, Yemen, England, Cyprus, Canada, and the United States – a journey that shaped her global and sensitive perspective. After earning a degree in Communications with a specialization in Cinema from Howard University in Washington, D.C., Muluneh worked as a photojournalist for The Washington Post, an experience that deepened her commitment to telling stories often ignored by mainstream media. Today, that journalistic background merges with a poetic and symbolic visual language able to transcend borders and time.
In her work, the image becomes a political and spiritual act, a sacred space where primary colors and geometric compositions reflect the dialogue between migration, identity and belonging. During an interview, Muluneh stated: “It was truly an advantage to invest in the continent because there are many subjects I explored that I couldn’t have addressed unless I was on the ground, breathing the air, drinking the water, truly connecting with my own society”.
Muluneh ‘redraws’ contemporary Africa with images able to speak to all of humanity. As art critic Jacqueline Ceresoli states, whose text accompanies and introduces her works in the exhibition held at Giampaolo Abbondio’s Playlist Gallery in Milan: “Her photographs are visionary windows that compel us to see another Africa: enigmatic, ritualistic, sublime. A land that both migrates and remains at the same time, inhabited by timeless, placeless goddesses”.
Aïda Muluneh rejects the clichéd, stereotyped visions of Africa; her gaze is instead an intimate and profound journey into the cultural identity of a continent in transformation, without ever losing touch with its spiritual roots. Her art is a vibrant dialogue with history, migration, and the thousand shades of belonging that permeate contemporary Africa. In this visual storytelling, Africa is never static – it is a living, breathing organism, capable of constant regeneration and rebirth.
At the center of this narrative is the female body, which Muluneh elevates to a symbol of power, resilience, and sacredness. The women in her works are never mere photographic subjects: they are modern goddesses, incarnations of an ancient energy that transcends time and space. They are voices that speak of daily struggles and quiet hopes, of an identity that is built every day between memory and innovation.
Through her masterful use of body painting, the skin becomes a sacred canvas upon which rituals and stories of struggle and hope are celebrated. The geometric and symbolic patterns, inspired by African traditions and reinterpreted through a contemporary lens, tell stories of identity, resistance, and belonging.
The defining element of Aïda Muluneh’s work is her symbolic, almost painterly use of color. Hues become language, a vehicle for emotion, spirituality, and mystery: deep red like the blood of the earth, intense blue like the infinite African sky, warm yellow like the sun that kisses the plains. These tones vibrate and merge in perfect geometries, transforming each image into a visual symphony that speaks directly to the soul.
The settings in which Muluneh places her figures – symbolic and suspended landscapes, dreamlike spaces where reality dissolves giving way to a mystical, almost sacred atmosphere. Nature becomes a collaborator, light takes poetic form, and architectural geometries intertwine with ritual elements to create environments seemingly outside of time – spaces for meditation and introspection. Her backdrops are not mere scenery but integral players in the narrative, elements imbued with meaning that amplify the emotional power of her portrayed figures.
Special thanks to the Playlist Gallery by Giampaolo Abbondio in Milan for providing materials on Aïda Muluneh. The gallery hosted the exhibition The Homeless Wanderer – Aïda Muluneh, whose title, as per the gallery’s tradition, is inspired by a piece of music: The Homeless Wanderer by Ethiopian pianist and composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
A bittersweet echo accompanies the gaze, becoming the soundtrack to a silent and powerful diaspora.
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Rebecca, your professional career initially developed within the world of commercial art and visual communication. What personal and creative reflections led you to abandon that dimension to dedicate yourself fully to an intimate and independent painting practice?
I have been building businesses since I was 19, and my background in marketing gave me a strong foundation. But painting has always been my first language. At a certain point, I realized I needed to focus fully on creating work that came from me, not from deadlines or campaigns. Painting lets me dig deeper into emotion, intimacy, and the complexity of women’s lives in a way commercial work never could.
Atlantic Canada is present in your work not as a simple landscape, but as a truly sensitive matrix. What is the almost symbiotic relationship you have with this territory, and how does its fluid and ever-changing nature impact your artistic research?
Living in Atlantic Canada has shaped everything about me as an artist. The tides, the fog, the unpredictability of the weather are not just scenery, they are a rhythm I live inside of. They have taught me to accept change as part of the process, and that comes through in my work.
Your paintings don’t describe reality but evoke it. You manage to imbue everyday gestures, common objects, and seemingly marginal scenes with emotional depth. What is the process by which the ordinary is transformed into poetic and pictorial language in your hands?
I have always felt the everyday holds poetry. A simple gesture, the way light falls, even something as ordinary as laundry on a line carries stories and emotions. My process is about slowing down and letting those moments become visible through paint.
Tides often recur in your work as a living, breathing metaphor. What meaning do these cyclical movements of water have for you, and how do you manage to translate into visual language this notion of time that is not linear, but circular, fluid, almost ancestral?
The tides are everything here. They move in cycles, not straight lines, and I see them as a metaphor for time, memory, and resilience. For me, they also connect strongly with women’s lives, with strength, ebb, flow, and renewal. That is something I try to echo in the way I build up and pull back layers on canvas.
Color is a key element of your expressive vocabulary. It never seems to be chosen purely for aesthetic effect, but rather for inner resonance. How do you construct your color palette in your creative process? Is there an intuitive, symbolic, or even autobiographical relationship with the hues you use?
Color is never random in my work. Sometimes it comes intuitively, other times it is connected to memory or emotion. My marketing background gave me an awareness of how color communicates, but as a painter I use it in a more personal way. It becomes an emotional map for each piece.
Your works seem to keep a silent narrative, made more of intuitions than statements. A sort of invisible fabric connects figures, objects, spaces, and voids. Do you identify with the idea of an art that doesn’t express a message but implies it, like poetry that leaves room for echoes?
I do not want my paintings to explain everything. I would rather they leave space for viewers to bring their own experiences and emotions. Like poetry, the unsaid can often be more powerful than the stated.
Water, landscape, the human figure: your subjects interact with each other in a delicate and never invasive relationship. How do you maintain this balance between the intimacy of the pictorial gesture and respect for the reality you observe and translate onto the canvas?
Whether it is the figure, the landscape, or water, I approach it with care. I want to be present and intimate with what I am painting, but never overstep or force it. It is a balance between observation and interpretation.
We live in an age where images are omnipresent, accelerated, and overexposed. Your work, instead, invites slowness, contemplation, and the rediscovery of the long term. Do you believe painting can still offer an alternative, almost meditative experience, in contrast to today’s frenzy?
We live in a world where images are everywhere and gone in seconds. Painting does the opposite, it slows us down. I think that is its power today, to create a space for reflection and presence, almost like a meditative pause.
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