ETHEL TAWE

Ethel-Ruth Tawe (b. Yaoundé, Cameroon) is an antidisciplinary artist and creative researcher exploring memory in Africa and its diaspora. Image-making, storytelling, and time-travelling compose the framework of her inquiry. From photography, collage, and text, to moving image, installation and other time-based media, Ethel examines culture and technology often from a speculative lens. Her burgeoning curatorial practice took form in an inaugural exhibition titled 'African Ancient Futures', and continues to expand in a myriad of audiovisual experiments.

Ethel is recipient of the Magnum Foundation 2022 Counter Histories Grant-Program for her multimedia project 'Image Frequency Modulation', which was also selected for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2023 DocLab Forum. This project was awarded Black Public Media's 2024 PitchBLACK Immersive Award and Fellowship. Ethel is a 2024 recipient of the 10x10 Photobook Research Grant for her project 'The Algorithms of Colonial African Photobooks'. Her works have been exhibited at 'Black Atlantic Visions' at Eye Filmmuseum x MACA, 'AfterImages' (2023) at Rele Gallery Lagos, 'Double Exposures' (2023) at PhotoIreland Festival in Dublin, 'Back in the Day is our Future' (2021) at Melkweg Amsterdam, flat70’s 'Reclaim Space' (2021) billboard exhibition in London, Mozilla Foundation's 'Ancestral Intelligence' (2022), among others. Ethel has presented at the University of Oxford, Maastricht University, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD SF), Afrikana Film Festival, amongst other engagements. She is a program affiliate at The New Institute's 'Black Feminism and the Polycrisis' program in Hamburg where she was a 2024 artist-in-residence. She was also a 2022 artist-in-residence at Open Palm (Palm Heights) in Grand Cayman where she showcased a site-specific installation along with an online series on Something Curated. Ethel hosts an Oroko Radio music program titled 'Listening To Images', and her work has been featured on international platforms like BOMB Magazine, Deadline, Nataal and OkayAfrica.

 

Ethel has consulted on and produced global campaigns for cultural platforms like ART X Lagos and international organisations like the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action. She has conducted talent research for brands like Nike and Johnnie Walker, as well as film/image research for selections shown at Tribeca Film Festival, Blackstar Fest, The Barbican Center and others. She is a contributor to the British Journal of Photography, ContemporaryAnd, Quartz, Feminists, among other publications. She was previously Editorial Director for arts and culture platform Africa 2.O Magazine.  Ethel holds an MSc Development Studies from SOAS University of London and a BA (Hons) International Human Rights. Her academic research examined the safeguarding of in/tangible heritage in Africa, informing her work experience with the African Union and organisations in The Hague. Living in Cameroon, Tanzania, Kenya, The US, UK, Netherlands, and Ghana has informed her multifaceted approach.

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