Merikokeb Berhanu Untitled CXVIII, 2026

Merikokeb's new paintings, produced in 2026 for this exhibition, represent a significant development in her practice. Working across a range of scales, from the large format Untitled CXIV and Untitled CXV to smaller, more concentrated compositions like Untitled CXX, Merikokeb continues to explore the semi-abstracted figurative language she has developed over the past decade, while pushing it into new chromatic and compositional territory. The works share a recurring visual vocabulary: interlocking organic forms that suggest bodies, landscapes, and cellular structures simultaneously, without resolving into any one of them. Equally fluid in their meaning are Merikokeb’s representations of the human body: individual feet or hands become visible but embody a more generalized human presence; elongated shapes with rounded heads could represent a group of flowers just as much as a community of men and women. Fragments of the human body are woven into a conflation of vegetal, organic, and perhaps even mineral form.