The Slow Truth Hidden Beneath the Visible

Apr 18 , 2026. By Blen Hailu ( Blen Hailu (blenmahi12@gmail.com) studied marketing, management and law. She works in communications and digital content creation, with a focus on human rights, equity and youth engagement.  )

Tucked inside a lively compound where people gather to eat and drink, "Hidden Beneath Existence" used the location to enhance the viewer's experience. Large posters from past events line the staircase, marking the venue as a cultural cross-roads. The transition from the social noise below to the gallery's silence prepares the viewer to "slow down" before seeing the first photograph. This environmental shift mirrors the artists' appeal that viewers look beyond the exteriors of people and places, Writes Blen Hailu (blenmahi12@gmail.con) studied marketing, management and law. She works in communications and digital content creation, with a focus on human rights, equity and youth engagement.

A collaborative photography exhibition titled “Hidden Beneath Existence” opened at Atmosphere, bringing together the work of Rebeka Negatu and Helen Mulugetta. The show set up a conversation between two ways of seeing, meeting between silence and movement, memory and observation, presence and passage.

A self-taught visual storyteller based in Addis Abeba, Rebeka works across photography and documentary videography. She captures quiet moments, emotional texture, and the layered realities of people and places. Her images pause on expressions that might pass unnoticed, giving viewers time to meet the depth in a face or gesture.

Helen, also self-taught and born and raised in Addis Abeba, began taking photographs at 17. She made her first image with a mobile phone, an ordinary moment that started a lasting passion. Drawn to the rhythm of the streets, she began photographing daily life with her father’s bridge camera. Over time, she developed a visual language shaped by observation, human connection, movement, shadow, and everyday encounters.

Together, the two artists asked viewers to think about how identity, presence, and perception unfold beyond surface appearances. They asked people to slow down and notice what often goes unseen, such as layered experiences, inner worlds, and brief moments beneath what is immediately visible. Their images questioned what it really means to be seen in a fast-moving world that often settles for the exterior.

The Exhibition, opened in the first week of April this year, was on the first floor of Atmosphere, on Zimbabwe St., not far from Alem Cinema, tucked inside a lively compound where people gather to talk, eat, and drink. But the mood changes as visitors move toward the staircase. On the first floor, the bustle below gives way to calm. On the way up, large posters from past events line the approach, signs that the venue serves as a cultural meeting point.

Nearby is an open corner with a foosball table, locally known as “Joteni,” where groups gather. These scenes bridge the social life downstairs and the reflective room ahead.

The Exhibition space regularly hosts rotating displays of paintings, photography, and visual work. But entering it feels like stepping into a quieter pocket within the building. The shift from noise to quiet becomes part of the experience. It slows the viewer before the first photograph is seen.

Walking through the room, I moved from the smiling nun and monk to the careful expressions in Rebeka’s work. I thought of her series, “The Skin’s Script,” in which she examines the ageing body as a living archive. Beyond representing individuals, these images seem to carry histories written across time. Wrinkles become traces of endurance, memory, laughter, and survival. The stillness in these portraits is not empty. It feels full, as if each photograph continues speaking after one looks away.

Beside these portraits were the moving figures of young people in Helen’s series, “In Shadows of the Street,” in which she photographs people on streets alongside their shadows. The shadows stretch, shift, and sometimes seem to lead the figures, as though another presence is walking with them. In these works, motion becomes its own language. The streets are not simple backgrounds but living spaces where effort, ambition, uncertainty, and persistence unfold side by side.

Moving between the two bodies of work creates a subtle emotional rhythm. One moment, I stood before faces shaped by decades of living. Next, I met young bodies moving through crowded streets with urgency and purpose. The Exhibition places these moments side by side without forcing a conclusion. Time stretches between the images, linking youth and age in ways that feel both distant and close.

It got me thinking about how the cycle of life remains the same. When we are young, we push forward with urgency, working hard with what we have, believing that everything depends on what we can accomplish right now. There is a restlessness in that stage of life. But in Rebeka’s portraits, another message appears. Meaning may not lie only in speed or achievement. It may also gather in relationships, memories, and moments that take years to form.

As someone who turned 25 and often feels as if I am running out of time, I find that pressure rooted in my generation. There is a need to move quickly, to define ourselves early, and to measure progress through visible milestones. But walking through the Exhibition turned that urgency into a question instead of a certainty. I found myself wondering what will bring a smile to my face when I am in my 70s or 80s, what memories will remain strong enough to return when my body slows, and my routines change. I imagined a future version of myself remembering small conversations, friendships, creative risks, and unexpected turns, rather than only measurable success.

Between the hustling youth caught in motion and the stillness of wrinkling yet joyful faces, the Exhibition asked what would really matter years from now. It invites viewers to think beyond immediate expectations and consider the emotional traces they leave in their own lives. These photographs offered insight into the idea that happiness may not always come through speed or certainty, but through attention, connection, and persistence over time.

Standing between the images felt like standing between two mirrors reflecting different moments of the same journey. The path forward is also a path that one day becomes memory, and the way we live now slowly shapes the expressions we will carry later in life.

PUBLISHED ON Apr 18,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1355]