Nahom Teklehaimanot
Born:
Ethiopia
Lives in:
Kenya
Location
- Art Gallery of New South Wales
Nahom Teklehaimanot is an Eritrean artist whose practice unfolds through layers of image, memory, and time. Using collage and airbrush, he transforms archival fragments into fluid compositions where softness meets fracture. Airbrushed surfaces blur the line between presence and erasure, evoking dreams, distance, and longing. His work navigates the emotional terrain of migration, belonging, and the fragile persistence of memory. Beneath the skin of each piece lie ruptures, traces of departure, loss, and transformation. Both intimate and expansive, Nahom’s visual language is a meditation on the spaces we carry within us, the places we leave behind, and the invisible threads that tether us to the past. In this tension, he finds beauty, resilience, and a quiet, searching hope.
Nahom Teklehaimanot, The House Forgets my Name, 2025, from the series ‘This is My Silence, You Name the Sound.’ Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy of the artist and Circle Art Gallery © Nahom Teklehaimanot. Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Felicity Jenkins.
Nahom Teklehaimanot
Born 1991, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya
The House Forgets My Name 2025
Only the Cactus is Green 2025
No Shore for the Living, No Shore for the Dead 2025
from the series This is My Silence, You Name the Sound
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney
Courtesy of the artist and Circle Art Gallery
Nahom Teklehaimanot is an Eritrean artist whose practice unfolds through layers of image, memory and time. As a mediation on the spaces we carry within, the places we leave behind and the invisible threads to our past, his visual language and innovative painting techniques transform fragmented images into fluid compositions that reflect the emotional terrain of migration and exile.
Often taking inspiration from children’s stories and picture books, Teklehaimanot assembles collaged material from archives and magazines before airbrushing these components into cohesive, dreamlike scenes. The soft ethereal effect of this technique is at odds with jagged and fractured compositions, where loose limbs and disembodied eyes hint at something less than idyll. Such juxtaposition embodies the artist’s lived experience of migration and exile. Gentle memories of home are disrupted by the emotional terrain of migration, belonging, and the fragile persistence of memory.