Biography

Hana Yilma Godine‘s work is influenced by observations of her surroundings and social structures during her upbringing in the multicultural metropolis of Addis Ababa, and while traveling and studying in Europe and the United States.

The Melted Canvas, 2025, oil and fabric on canvas,165cm x 165cm.

Godine received an MFA from Boston University in 2020, having previously studied at Casa Da Zhventude de Ourence, Spain; the Abyssinia School of Fine Art and Design, and the Ale School of Fine Art and Design, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where her teacher was the modernist master Tadesse Mesfin.

The Melted Canvas #2, 2025, oil and fabric on canvas,165cm x 165cm.

Godine’s first U.S. solo exhibition, Spaces within Space, opened at Fridman Gallery in 2020. Her first institutional exhibition premiered at the National Museum of Ethiopia in April, 2021.

The Melted Canvas #3, 2025, oil and fabric on canvas,165cm x 165cm.

Artist Statement

As a painter, I pay attention to the commonalities between people and the relationships they have with their environments. My artistic motivations and decisions draw from what I know and what I don’t, my own rational and intuitive observations, and preexisting visual and written languages. I think about painting as a space that mediates time and place, bringing together people from a globalized world, and reconciling the past, present, and future into one unified form.

Figures are central to my compositions. Their colorful, transparent, and collaged surfaces suggest embedded histories and embodied feelings. I work symbolically to communicate the complexity of women's lives and see them as a source of life within my paintings.

The Melted Canvas #4, 2025, oil and fabric on canvas,76cm x 76cm.

Growing up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a large city populated by people of many cultures, I have observed firsthand a variety of languages, religions, and cultural traditions. Visiting Europe and moving to the United States has inspired me further and exposed me to an even broader understanding of culture. I think about how these important and present qualities of life can be expressed through the visual language and the materiality of painting.

The Melted Canvas #5, 2025, oil and fabric on canvas,76cm x 76cm.

Accumulation of mark and color, the layering of space, and the use of different materials as a substance such as fabrics, printed images, wood, thread, and paint allows me to describe, visually, the realities of a specific place and it’s social and environmental situations and create a conversation in the global space. Preserving ideas from the fabrics in the process of making painting allows the fabric to function as a paint but not as a surface.

The Melted Canvas #6, 2025, oil and fabric on canvas,76cm x 76cm.

Working with a spectrum of transparency and opacity, I communicate the sensations of an environment such as atmosphere, air, wind, and speed, all of which evoke the flow and movement of life. My paintings also included drawing incorporated throughout them. I draw in paint first, then lose the drawing as I apply color with paint and fabric, and later, find it again.

The Melted Canvas #7, 2025, oil and fabric on canvas,165cm x 127cm.

My recent experimentation with fabric, historical printed images represents a huge shift in my studio practice in the way that it is informing the content and formal structures of my work. Moreover, it is a symbol of the connection between the body, the earth, and the Universe as a substance.

@hana_studio_painting
https://fridmangallery.com/2025/07/10/artists-hana-yilma-godine/