የካቲት ፲፪ – Yekatit 12
Description:
The title የካቲት ፲፪ – Yekatit 12 (February 19 in the Ethiopian calendar) refers to the massacre of Addis Ababa, which took place between February 19 and 21, 1937. The slaughter was carried out by Italian forces as a brutal retribution for the attempted assassination of the viceroy of Ethiopia, Rodolfo Graziani, by two Ethiopian resistance fighters, Abraham Deboch and Mogus Asghedom, who opposed the Italian occupation. Historians estimate that approximately 19,000 Ethiopians were killed during the massacre.
The artwork is a formal reproduction, reduced to its most essential elements, of a stair-shaped monument commissioned in Addis Ababa by Benito Mussolini and Graziani to commemorate the events of 1937. Each of the monument’s 14 steps represented a year of the Fascist era, from 1922 to 1936—the latter also marking the beginning of Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia. On May 5, 1941, the occupation ended when Emperor Haile Selassie returned from exile and placed the Lion of Judah—the dynastic symbol of the Ethiopian Empire—on the top step of the staircase, a gesture of reclamation. The artist Jermay Michael Gabriel (b. Addis Ababa, 1997; lives and works between Milan and Lisbon) renews this gesture by placing the monument within the Palace of Sciences and re-signifying it as a decolonial device. The work projects period propaganda alongside radio broadcasts announcing the independence of the Horn of Africa from Italian colonial rule. ML
