Lives and works between Addis Ababa and Oslo.
Robel Temesgen (b. 1987, Ethiopia) is an artist and researcher whose practice spans painting, installation, performance, and publication. His work explores the symbiotic relationships between people, places, and spiritual traditions, often engaging with vernacular knowledge systems and the metaphysical dimensions of everyday life. Temesgen’s long-term projects, including Adbar, Addis Newspaper, and Practising Water, investigate how cultural memory and ritual shape public space and collective experience.
Temesgen is currently a PhD fellow in Artistic Research at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Since 2010, he has served as a lecturer in the Painting department at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, Addis Ababa University.
His work has been exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions including Eye of a Water at Nitja Center for Contemporary Art (2025), Interior Landscapes at Tromsø Kunstforening (2022), Faces of Stories at Kunsthalle Lingen (2022), Practising Water; report #1 at Kunsthall Oslo (2023), Min Nebere at Modern Art Museum, Gebrekristos Desta center, Addis Ababa (2018), There is no Politics in Painting? at Marabouparken, Stockholm (2017), and Adbar at Tiwani Contemporary Art, London (2016). His group exhibitions include Musafiri; Travellers and Guests at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2025), Land of Fire at Kunsthalle Bega, Romania (2024), and This is Not Africa at ARoS Museum, Denmark (2021).
Temesgen has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Statens Kunststipend (2025), the Lingen Art Prize (2022), the IASPIS (2017), and the Junge Akademie Scholarship from the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2016). His publications include Faces of Stories (2023), Practising Water; Report #1 (2023), and contributions to 100 Words for Water: A Projective Ecosocial Vocabulary (2025), and Where is Africa (CARA, 2024).