Merikokeb Berhanu Untitled XCX, 2025

Untitled XCX features fragments of the human body and encapsulates the conflation of vegetal, organic, and perhaps even mineral form. Multiple elongated shapes can be seen as abstract, organic, and human at the same time. Solid colors alternate with intricately patterned sections where lines can become cell membranes, currents of an orange-colored stream, or a field of schematic technical detritus.

Merikokeb Berhanu’s work combines abstract and representational elements, forging a distinct formal vocabulary. Her biomorphic imagery evokes associations with life: Rounded shapes invoke cells, buds, seed pods, or embryonic life, suggesting processes of conception, gestation, reproduction, or birth – underlying themes that are more intuited than stated. A circular form recalls celestial bodies such as sun or moon, but can also be positioned as a figure’s head, organ or, in a formal vocabulary that powerfully destabilizes our sense of scale, even as a cellular structure. References to animal life bespeak an understanding of the connectedness of all life-forms.