Writers Step Into the Frame, Out of the Shadows

May 23 , 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.  )

The "Vision of Words" Exhibition required the coordinated participation of individual authors, independent organisers, and creative entities, including Senegni Creative, the Moseb Band, and guitarist Carlo Ertola. Cultural observers at the Goethe-Institut stated that archiving literary memory within the local context remains highly dependent on private commitment and independent initiatives. By consolidating the visual records of 36 diverse writers into a singular and cohesive space, the Exhibition serves as a temporary institutional archive, demonstrating how independent collaborations can step in to preserve baseline cultural histories, 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.

There is a particular intimacy in seeing the face of someone whose words have already lived in us. A voice first heard through pages, a grief or joke carried by language, suddenly has eyes, hands, and posture.

That small shock of recognition gave “Vision of Words” its charge when Ethiopia’s first photographic exhibition devoted to its literary community opened at Goethe-Institut on Tuesday, May 12, 2026.

Curated by Feben Fancho (PhD) and organised by Asayehegn Asfaw, the Exhibition brings together portraits of 36 authors, poets, playwrights, translators, performers, screenwriters, and literary critics. It places older literary figures, including Ayalneh Mulatu and Asaf Damte, alongside younger artists such as Natnael Tadelle (Don) and Zerihun Taye (Mallo), whose work spans slam poetry, digital performance, and experimental forms. The result is an argument about continuity. Ethiopian literature is changing, but it is not severed from the forms that shaped it.

The opening drew writers, readers, artists, musicians, relatives, and literature lovers into a room thick with talk about books, poetry, language, and memory. Formal remarks gave way to music by Moseb Band and an acoustic guitar performance by Carlo Ertola. Between the portraits, guests moved with food and drinks, stopping to recognise a face, ask after a book, or talk about the absence of writers in visual archives.

Senegni Creative, the writers who agreed to sit for the portraits, Moseb Band, and Carlo Ertola helped bring the evening together. Yet the Exhibition’s larger point went beyond an opening night. It asked what it means to preserve a literary culture beyond the printed book, and what is lost when the makers of language are remembered only by name. The idea is tied to Feben’s own path.

Before curating the Exhibition, she worked as the general manager of "Gitim Sitim", an open-mic platform that created space for poets and performers. She helped make her one of the recognisable voices in the spoken-word community. In 2024, she represented Ethiopia at the International Youth Poetry Festival organised by the China Writers Association, an experience that brought international recognition and exposed her to literary preservation projects abroad.

While in China, she visited archives devoted to well-known writers from earlier decades. There she saw how literary figures could be documented, remembered, and visually preserved. That encounter helped shape the idea that became “Vision of Words.” Dirk Skiba, a German photographer behind the project, has a website that mainly features portraits, but Feben hopes her Exhibition can mark the beginning of a broader platform, one that archives local writers, their works, histories, and contributions to culture.

At the Exhibition, established names appear beside younger poets and performers who are testing new forms of expression through spoken word and digital platforms. The arrangement shows not a hierarchy but a conversation across time. Literature, in this telling, is not fixed in bookshelves or classrooms. It moves from stage to screen, from page to microphone, and from memory to image.

Skiba has spent more than a decade photographing authors around the world. His method differs from commercial portrait work. He looks for images that feel personal and artistic, and he prefers to meet writers where they feel at ease rather than in studios. What began in Ghana has grown into an international series covering 102 countries, with nearly 1,700 portraits forming one of the world's largest archives of author photography.

Ethiopia is one of the newest stops in his journey. Skiba spent 11 days and gave about three hours to each author. The time mattered because he had a conversation before composition, patience before the shutter. He does not want to take a picture simply. He wants them in their element, being themselves.

Among the featured writers is Zerihun Taye, widely known by his stage name Mallo. He spoke about the emotional link between his portrait and poetry. Mallo is especially known for his poem “Mallo,” an Afaan Oromo word that translates roughly to “Please.” The poem draws on his experience of being bullied as a child. To him, the portrait seemed to hold that feeling of vulnerability, exposure, and the dignity of someone who has turned pain into art.

That anecdote captured what many visitors felt as they passed through the hall. The photographs did not simply make writers visible. They invited viewers to think about the work behind the face and the life behind the work. For some visitors, it was rare to see Ethiopian writers documented this way. Others noted the need to preserve literary memory before it fades, especially where archives often depend on private commitment rather than durable institutions.

The Exhibition also raised harder questions. Several writers and literature enthusiasts saw it as an opportunity to introduce Ethiopian literature to international audiences and stir curiosity about local writers abroad. Others wondered whether Ethiopian literature has been fully valued at home. Some worry that international recognition can pressure artists to shape their work to meet expectations abroad, making literature less authentic and more performative.

Even with those concerns, the sight of writers being celebrated carried force. By joining photography and literature, “Vision of Words” creates a visual memory and asks audiences to look at the works behind the portraits. In a digital culture that moves quickly and rewards short attention, the Exhibition compels visitors to slow down. Younger guests took photographs beside writers they admired, while older visitors paused before figures whose works shaped generations.

In the meeting of past and present, print and digital culture, local memory and international visibility, the show opened a conversation likely to continue after its closing day.

PUBLISHED ON May 23,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1360]