World Cultures, World Arts Series: Crossing the Borders: Kebedech Tekleab on Art, Exile, and the Poetics of Resilience
Thu Nov 20 2025
|
1:00PM
– 2:00PM
| Thu Nov 20 2025
Event Description:
Artist and poet Kebedech Tekleab reflects on exile, resilience, and creative renewal through her installation Crossing the Borders (2018–2023). Tekleab traces how displacement shaped her artistic and poetic voice by drawing on her lived experience as a political dissident and survivor of a decade-long imprisonment during the Ethiopia–Somalia conflict, and relating her personal experience to the global human condition. Her journey—from fleeing Addis Ababa on foot, to enduring captivity in a Somali concentration camp, to later pursuing her studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C.—illuminates how art can emerge from profound struggle. In Crossing the Borders, she blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, creating layered spaces that evoke both the fractures and continuities of migration. Tekleab invites us to reconsider exile not only as rupture, but as a site of vigilance, creativity, and transformation.
The World Cultures, World Arts Series bridges the gap between the business education of a Baruch student and the cultural and artistic world. In each session, an artist or art historian presents a detailed look at a piece of artwork, its context and its relevance for today. We will connect world cultures with the fine arts, to see if we can find an alternate way to become globally-accomplished students. The Baruch community is invited to attend this free online lecture.
