Untitled, Yosan Bihon, 2020
Hiraeth means to long for a home that no longer exists, or that never was, to begin with. The concept of longing for something you cannot return to is what I wanted to explore in this piece. My parents are Tigrayans who came to Canada fleeing war, but despite raising me in Canada they never missed an opportunity to bring me to Addis or Mekele to show me where my home and family were. Now there is an ethnic cleansing of Tigray, drone strikes rendering the city unrecognizable.
My goal with this piece was to portray my personal impression of nostalgia and what it means to miss something that may not be there anymore.