Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery, a new publication edited by Elizabeth W. Giorgis, Chair of the Department of Humanities and Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at The Africa Institute, explores the Ethiopian art form of telsem. Released in 2025, the book examines how telsem combines symbols, drawings, and texts to address contemporary challenges such as climate change, war, and poverty.
Telsem has historically been categorized in Western art frameworks as “healing art” or “talisman art.” However, the book argues that telsem should be recognized as an important part of modernist art, beyond these limited definitions. The publication centers on the work of Ethiopian artist Henok Melkamzer, showcasing how his practice fits into both the telsem tradition and contemporary art.
Hoor Al Qasimi, President of Global Studies University, writes in her foreword, “It is my hope that this publication presents an opportunity for those unfamiliar with telsem art to immerse themselves not only in its critical contributions to fine arts but also its rich history as a site of indigenous knowledge. We believe that Melkamzer and Giorgis’s work can provide important resources on contemporary African art practices and understudied indigenous art forms.”
Alongside documentation of Melkamzer’s work and a provisional guide to the interpretation of telsem aesthetics, the monograph includes critical reflections from historian, critic, and curator Salah M. Hassan, Chancellor of Global Studies University and Dean at The Africa Institute; artist Julie Mehretu; and Semeneh Ayalew Asfaw, Postdoctoral Fellow at The Africa Institute. These contributions supplement and enhance a wide-ranging critical and curatorial essay by Giorgis, which situates Melkamzer’s work within both the telsem tradition and the broader contemporary art world.
In 2024, Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery marked the largest solo exhibition of Melkamzer’s work to date and the first major showcase of telsem art in the region. Organized by Sharjah Art Foundation in collaboration with The Africa Institute and the Sharjah Museums Authority, the exhibition was curated by Giorgis, Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at The Africa Institute. The exhibition repositions telsem as an intellectual tradition with contemporary resonance, challenging its narrow categorization as merely “healing art” or “talisman art.”
The book also features an introduction by world-renowned Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu, reflecting on telsem’s unique qualities. She writes, “These were intricate, potent, exuberantly colored, meticulous paintings of eyes, entangled in shapes, geometries, and vines dotted with numbers and symbols. These details are familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Ethiopian Coptic illuminated manuscripts or even the kitsch market trinkets that borrow from that language. The history of telsem painting as talismanic healing art and esoteric epistemology, however, predates all of that. I was struck by how different the logic of these paintings felt and the power they held as reverberating objects—resplendent, circuitous, and exacting in their abstracted forms. The elaborate, labyrinthian paintings are first drawn in pencil or in black ink, then some are painted densely with color and others are more sparsely painted with color to accentuate vital nodes. The sheer immensity of the scope of cosmological sensibility and space in these modestly scaled, shamanistic yet deftly contemporary paintings, is staggering.”
Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery is now available for purchase through Skira and the Meroë bookshop on campus. Browse through our publications to learn more.
Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery, a new publication edited by Elizabeth W. Giorgis, Chair of the Department of Humanities and Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at The Africa Institute, explores the Ethiopian art form of telsem. Released in 2025, the book examines how telsem combines symbols, drawings, and texts to address contemporary challenges such as climate change, war, and poverty.
Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery, a new publication edited by Elizabeth W. Giorgis, Chair of the Department of Humanities and Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at The Africa Institute, explores the Ethiopian art form of telsem. Released in 2025, the book examines how telsem combines symbols, drawings, and texts to address contemporary challenges such as climate change, war, and poverty.
Telsem has historically been categorized in Western art frameworks as “healing art” or “talisman art.” However, the book argues that telsem should be recognized as an important part of modernist art, beyond these limited definitions. The publication centers on the work of Ethiopian artist Henok Melkamzer, showcasing how his practice fits into both the telsem tradition and contemporary art.
Hoor Al Qasimi, President of Global Studies University, writes in her foreword, “It is my hope that this publication presents an opportunity for those unfamiliar with telsem art to immerse themselves not only in its critical contributions to fine arts but also its rich history as a site of indigenous knowledge. We believe that Melkamzer and Giorgis’s work can provide important resources on contemporary African art practices and understudied indigenous art forms.”
Alongside documentation of Melkamzer’s work and a provisional guide to the interpretation of telsem aesthetics, the monograph includes critical reflections from historian, critic, and curator Salah M. Hassan, Chancellor of Global Studies University and Dean at The Africa Institute; artist Julie Mehretu; and Semeneh Ayalew Asfaw, Postdoctoral Fellow at The Africa Institute. These contributions supplement and enhance a wide-ranging critical and curatorial essay by Giorgis, which situates Melkamzer’s work within both the telsem tradition and the broader contemporary art world.
In 2024, Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery marked the largest solo exhibition of Melkamzer’s work to date and the first major showcase of telsem art in the region. Organized by Sharjah Art Foundation in collaboration with The Africa Institute and the Sharjah Museums Authority, the exhibition was curated by Giorgis, Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at The Africa Institute. The exhibition repositions telsem as an intellectual tradition with contemporary resonance, challenging its narrow categorization as merely “healing art” or “talisman art.”
The book also features an introduction by world-renowned Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu, reflecting on telsem’s unique qualities. She writes, “These were intricate, potent, exuberantly colored, meticulous paintings of eyes, entangled in shapes, geometries, and vines dotted with numbers and symbols. These details are familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Ethiopian Coptic illuminated manuscripts or even the kitsch market trinkets that borrow from that language. The history of telsem painting as talismanic healing art and esoteric epistemology, however, predates all of that. I was struck by how different the logic of these paintings felt and the power they held as reverberating objects—resplendent, circuitous, and exacting in their abstracted forms. The elaborate, labyrinthian paintings are first drawn in pencil or in black ink, then some are painted densely with color and others are more sparsely painted with color to accentuate vital nodes. The sheer immensity of the scope of cosmological sensibility and space in these modestly scaled, shamanistic yet deftly contemporary paintings, is staggering.”
Henok Melkamzer: Telsem Symbols and Imagery is now available for purchase through Skira and the Meroë bookshop on campus. Browse through our publications to learn more.
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