A Show that Begins with a Scream, Ends in Stillness

Jul 11 , 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.  )

Yared Olivelli's "Way Out / Way In" turns one man's screams in a monastery into a meditation on what we let into the soul, and what we cannot cast out. Writes, 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 within the quiet and tree-lined compound of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura on Belay Zeleke St., in the Semen Hotel area, Yared Olivelli's latest Exhibition, "Way Out / Way In," invites visitors into a meditation on the human interior.

Running until September 2, 2026, the show explores what enters the soul, what stays within it, and what eventually leaves. However, the experience begins before the gallery itself.

On entering the main gate of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (the Italian Cultural Institute), a visitor meets a long mural-covered wall where the colours of the Italian flag blend with comic-style illustrations and graphic imagery. The artwork turns the entrance into a lively visual corridor, setting a tone of curiosity. Past this first area, a second gate leads deeper into the compound, where security personnel point the way. On the left, a modest doorway serves as the entrance to the exhibition space, its plainness offering little hint of what lies beyond.

Inside, the gallery is intimate, with white walls and a low ceiling that draw viewers close to the work. Carefully placed fluorescent lights fall evenly on each painting, lifting the colours, shadows and textures, and the quiet holds the attention entirely on the art. There is nothing to hurry a visitor along, no wall text competing for the eye; only the paintings, and the space between them.

Yared, born in 1985, has participated in 11 exhibitions at galleries and cultural spaces and has taught at the University's School of Fine Arts & Design since his graduation in 2010.

For someone whose passion for art began early, the show is concerned with the entrances and exits of inner life, why people open themselves, what they let into their emotional and spiritual worlds, and what they choose, or struggle, to cast out.

At the centre of "Way Out / Way In" is a deceptively simple question.

What enters a person, and what leaves?

The idea grew out of a period Yared spent in a monastery. Near his tent was a grown man who screamed day and night. The cries were relentless, breaking sleep and filling the space with unrest. To the artist, the sounds seemed not to belong entirely to the man, but to something trapped within him.

Then one evening, his father arrived with his two young children and pitched a tent nearby. That night, the screaming stopped. The silence that followed felt profound, and the darkness itself seemed to settle into stillness. For Yared, who completed his undergraduate studies in Fine Arts (Graphics) from Addis Abeba University, it became a revelation. The presence of pure love appeared able to quiet something that fear, struggle, and isolation could not.

The next morning, the father and his children left. Soon after, Yared heard the man speaking again, though this time it was as if voices within him were arguing.

That encounter became the foundation of the Exhibition. It inspired paintings of figures in white garments set in spaces resembling churches. Yet the works are not illustrations of a single event. They turn the experience into a wider reflection on the invisible struggles inside every human being. The screaming man becomes a metaphor for the voices, wounds, fears and forces that live within the self. The father and his children stand for something else, the possibility of healing through love, innocence and human presence. Together, they embody two opposing energies that never stop interacting in the human spirit.

The paintings show that light and darkness sit in each of us. Just as a house has walls and doors, the soul has ports through which influences pass and portholes through which they leave. Some influences heal, and some destroy. Some shed light on what was previously unseen, and others make what was already dark seem darker still. Rather than offer easy answers, the Exhibition invites reflection. It asks what we allow into our lives and what we carry within, the voices that shape our decisions, the fears left unspoken, and the wounds that keep their hold long after they form.

The responses from visitors revealed that these themes span generations. As more people came in, their faces showed wonder and thought. Young visitors arrived alone, with siblings or with friends, moving slowly from one painting to the next. Later, a group of older men entered, and their reactions mirrored those of the younger ones. Despite the gap in age and experience, the works drew a similar engagement, one that asked people to pause, look and reflect.

More than its subject of darkness, what draws me to this Exhibition is that darkness has become its starting point for learning. The human condition here is neither simple nor clear-cut. Human beings are not made of some plain, innocent material. They are made of a constant internal civil war, fear and faith, silence and noise, destruction and healing. It is a portrait not of who we pretend to be, but of who we are when no one is watching.

The show also feels timely. We live in an age of endless stimulation, moving from one notification to the next, one task to another, seldom pausing to ask where the self stands. In a society full of ways to stay in touch, true contemplation often goes missing. In that sense, the Exhibition is an invitation to slow down, to stand still for once and listen to what the noise usually drowns out.

Standing before the paintings, I could not help but think about the state of the human spirit now. The work demonstrates that many of the battles shaping our lives happen out of public view, in the private rooms of memory, belief, fear, hope and longing. These struggles are not always visible, yet they shape how we treat others and how we understand ourselves.

The Exhibition's strength lies in its willingness to confront those hidden dimensions. It asks us to listen to the voices we usually ignore, to recognise the darkness we may feed, and to examine the cracks in our own inner walls. At the same time, it holds out the possibility that healing can come through awareness. Light enters not because darkness vanishes, but because a person is willing to face it.

In the end, it remains a journey, the journey of the soul. In a personal, evocative exploration of symbolist imagery and spiritual contemplation, Yared reflects on what crosses us, where and how it dwells, and what we finally give closure to.

An introspective experience becomes, in his hands, a shared inquiry, and then a passage toward inner discovery and healing.

PUBLISHED ON Jul 11,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1367]