Forbidden Fruit

Ephrem Solomon’s subjects tend to be depicted in isolation. Even when two figures are shown together, there is a gulf between them, and they are imbued with a profound sense of alienation. In this work, Forbidden Fruit, we see from the sitter’s posture that she is set back, as if wary or reluctant yet all the while transfixed. She is practically engulfed by a murder of crows, a potentially solemn omen as she stares tentatively beyond the picture plane. In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, its major characters are each in their own way completely wrapped up in their own complexes, the birds are everything the people are not: wild, passionate and free. Ephrem Solomon states "My works portrays the distance between what the governed people need and want and what the response is from the governors. I have tried to picture, as precisely as possible, the actual and innocent feeling of the governed".
Living and working in Addis Ababa, Ephrem Solomon primarily works in woodcut and mixed media collage. The woodcuts give his works the quality of sculptural reliefs, allowing the lines of weariness to be physically etched onto the sitter’s face. Using a limited colour palette, his works have a refined graphic quality. Examples of his works are held in the Saatchi Collection; the Tiroche DeLeon Collection; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. In 2018 Solomon was nominated for the Queen Sonja Print Award. He is represented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London.