Wosene’s works have been shown across the world as part of the following Museum Collections: Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington; The Newark Museum, New Jersey; Neuberger Museum of Art, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Fowler Museum, UCLA, California; Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida; Völkerkunde Museum, Switzerland; National Museum and the City of Addis Ababa Museum, Ethiopia.

 

His works are also part of many public & corporate collections such as: United Nations and Rockefeller Collections, New York; World Bank, Library of Congress, and Howard University, Washington; Bank of Hanover, New Hampshire; University of California Medical Center and Summit Hospital, California; Chikamori Hospital, Japan; Florida State University; University of Maryland Eastern Shore; and many international private collections.

Click below to watch our conversation with Wosene at his most recent exhibition, WordPlay:

halftribe.com Conversations: Who is ... Wosene

Born in 1950 in Ethiopia, Wosene Worke Kosrof received a BFA in 1972 from the School of Fine Arts, Addis Ababa, and was awarded an MFA from Howard University in 1980. He taught for a number of years at Vermont College and has participated in a number of international artist workshops and residency programs, most notably the Rockefeller in Bellagio, Italy. Wosene's studio is located in Berkeley, California.

For over twenty-five years, Wosene has explored the aesthetic potential of language, using the written symbols of his native Amharic as the major compositional element in his work. In his paintings, the calligraphic forms of Amharic are broken apart, abstracted, and reconfigured to create a new visual language that draws upon the artist's Ethiopian heritage while incorporating his experiences as an expatriate living in the United States. In his own words, “The symbols bring my culture to me and at the same time I recreate my culture with the symbols, producing a unique international visual language.”

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