Theo Eshetu

Theo Eshetu, currently based in Berlin as a recipient of the DAAD fellowship, was born in London and grew up in Addis Ababa, Dakar, and Belgrade, before settling in Rome, where he received his first camera aged 10 and appeared in a Fellini movie. Trained in London, he became a photographer of rock stars during the 1970s. Drawn into the worlds of David Bowie and Lindsay Kemp, Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground, Eshetu collaborated with a number of artists before concentrating on the art of video. Eshetu's work explores perception, identity, and notions of the sacred through electronic time-based media and optical devices and effects. He draws from anthropology, art history, scientific research, and religion—Catholic, African, Muslim, Buddhist—to explore clashes and harmonies of human subjectivity between world cultures in the global context.
Theo Eshetu’s work has won numerous international awards and appeared at The New Museum, NY, in the New York African Film Festival, at DIA Foundation’s Electronic Arts Intermix, NY, in Snap Judgments at ICP (International Centre for Photography), NY, at BAM Cinemateque, NY, at Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in Africa Remix at The Hayward Gallery, London, at the Venice Film Festival, Roma Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art in Rome, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice, UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and the Martin Gropius Bau In Berlin, among others.