Tizita

Arriving in the Speck Gallery, where it will stay throughout July, is Yeabsera Tabb's exhibition Tizita. Intricate,  soft, and exceedingly sentimental—it is imbued with a life's observations.

Born in Ethiopia, where the concept of community is highly valued, Ms. Tabb could always easily connect with others. Yet, upon moving to America, with its heightened importance placed upon individualism, she found these connections uprooted not just by distance but by design. These opposing existences are precisely what she seeks to explore in her exhibition, whose very title roughly translates to "memory," “nostalgia," or “longing.”

Primarily comprised of prints, drawings, and watercolors, her work deals with the cloudiness of memory and offers a twofold perspective on the manner of place.

Speaking of "teetering between what you once knew and what you're encountering now," she recognizes both an intangible notion of what one's mind is accustomed to—a mental sense of place—and one's physical surroundings. When these two definitions of place conflict, they can cause what Tabb describes as "a level of loss or grief." Yet this incompatibility does not always yield negativity, with Tabb noting that “there's a lot of positives too."

In one work detailed above, such positivity is preserved as Tabb seeks to explore the ephemeral aspects of events. 

A once-white tablecloth, the piece is a testament to a particular point in time, a dinner held amongst Tabb and her friends. As she states, "the stains are a residue" of this event; they call back to the joy of it all, the warm foods and feelings that made the dinner worth remembering in the first place. Even still, detached from this cheerful context, a question remains: how ought one reconcile the joys of a life lived at the expense of another?

In her second iteration of her show, Tizita, Ms. Tabb does not shy from such a manner of contemplation, raising even more philosophical questions. Her exhibition can be viewed within the Speck Gallery any time within the month of July during Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. The works can additionally be viewed and purchased on our online gallery.