Henok Melkamzer's Telsem Paintings at Sharjah Art Museum

Sharjah Art Museum presents the first institutional survey of Ethiopian artist Henok Melkamzer, featuring over 100 untitled works from 2013 to 2024. The exhibition challenges Western anthropological framing of telsem, an ancient Ethiopian tradition of talismanic drawings based on astrological systems and Ge'ez script. Melkamzer, trained by his father and grandfather who were telsem healers, reinterprets the practice on canvas with acrylic paint, expanding its formal possibilities. Works incorporate numerical calculations, the Ethiopian calendar, and recurring symbols like eight-pointed stars and crescent moons. The exhibition opens with an abstract grid of six squares and five circles, and includes large canvases with interlocking vine patterns. Melkamzer insists his work should be understood as pure painting, not ethnographic artifact. The show runs through 16 June.