ART THAT REFUSES SILENCE: FORGOTTEN ECHOES BY ESTIFANOS SOLOMON
@EstifanosSolomon
In the restless creative pulse of Addis Ababa, Ethiopian visual artist Estifanos Solomon emerges as a storyteller with intent. Trained in painting and printmaking, his practice navigates a delicate threshold between personal confession and collective reflection, drawing from lived experience to illuminate what society too often leaves in shadow - vulnerability, conflict and care.
Estifanos’ paintings and mixed media artworks serve as echo chambers for unheard voices, particularly those of children and marginalized communities. For him, art is rather social reckoning than decorative: “My art communicates the weight of stories that are too often ignored,” he says. His works probe the consequences of neglect - personal, social, institutional - and the quiet damage it inscribes on the most vulnerable. Yet rather than leaning into despair or being passive statements, his art and objective is accountability, where paintings are calls to empathy, asking viewers to confront their role within the system they observe.
@EstifanosSolomon
@EstifanosSolomon
Emotion for Estifanos is not something to be prescribed but rather to be provoked. “I want my works to catch the audience’s eyes with instant questions,” he explains. The hope is that reflection begins internally - Why does this move me? What does it reveal about my world? - and extends outward into action. Yet despite the conceptual depth of his practice, it is the act of making that brings him the purest joy, where the studio becomes a site of instinct. “On the canvas or the paper, that’s when I feel the most authentic. In my mind everything would be blurry but the art.” He approaches medium intuitively, exploring painting and printmaking with both intention and impulse, sometimes knowing the work’s outcome before touching the surface, other times discovering it through process.
“My art communicates the weight of stories that are too often ignored.”
@EstifanosSolomon
@EstifanosSolomon
Success, to him, is simple and immutable: authentic resonance. “The success is when the art sparks authentication with myself first, then with the audience,” he says. Anything less, he considers failure - not because the work is incomplete, but because it has not fulfilled its purpose. Therefore, it is precisely this commitment to truth and empathy that gives his work the force it has. In a world that numbs itself to suffering, Estifanos Solomon’s art refuses silence - it looks directly, asks urgently and leaves the viewer with a lingering call to care.
@EstifanosSolomon
@EstifanosSolomon
Follow Estifanos’ work on Instagram at @estif_solomon17 and stay tuned for future features of Creative Intersect at @thecreativeintersect.
