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The Kidist Foods Project is to provide employment to the Addis Ababa urban women with meaningful work, related to their own past experiences as cooks for their homes, families and relatives.All Ethiopian women are taught at an early age to cook meals, some for day-to-day consumption, others for important festivities like Christmas and Easter.These women can use the skills they already possess to generate income and funds for themselves and their families.
Banks
Health and social service agenciesNGOsProfessional contacts and colleaguesRelevant and influential individualsFamily and friends
Financial contributionsProfessional contributionsProfessional adviceContacts and links
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Ongoing, community projectStart in Addis AbabaExpanded into smaller towns, and rural regions
The artist featured on the walls of Cobuqa (whom I mentioned in my previous post) is Estifanos Solomon.
I was born in Addis Ababa Ethiopia in 1995 . Growing up I have always seen myselfin bigger stages telling a story through art that every creature deals with in theircircle of life. Art has always been part of me ever since I can remember it has beena place I called home. Through finding myself and the desire I have for it Art showed me the world from differ perspective that continued to inspire me with new ideas to develop in art and give back to the community that watched me grow.I decided to join the Art industry starting from scratch graduating from Teferi Mekonen and Russian cultural centre for primary level knowledge in painting and visual art respectively this in turn contributed for my successful years in Adiss abeba University Ale school of fine art and design school ( ASFAD) which I Graduated 2022/2014,a place that helped me grow my ability to understand a lot in print making after I joined the department. My days in the university not only thought me about print making but also showed me all about visual art.
Here's the painting at the bottom of the three exhibited at at Cobuqa, which is listed on Estifanos' Fine Art America page (painting from Fine Art America):
Art Statement
Despondency
We seek to escape the dark cave of a despondent mind by either dulling oneself mentally or through imaginative acts. One form of escapism is daydreaming and losing oneself in it can occur very quietly in the world as if it were nothing at all by creating the unnecessary distant in the mind. Well, the distance between us as a society, were respect doesn’t feel like existing anymore I fell like we lost love inside of us yet we pretending its here and the influence of that on the very circle of our family and neighbourhood and country.
Landscape
Nature is both all around us and deep within us. We are inseparable from nature - our bodies, lives and minds depend on the air we breathe and the food we eat. The earth sustains our very life force. Whenever I go out in the fields, in the forests, on the mountains, or along running streams, I feel the combination of trees, mountains and water, I am inspired from my observation of nature and its beauty. When observing the combination of trees, mountains and water, I am inspired from my soul, from the idea or feeling with which I associate during my observation of nature. So I create my landscape work as I understand it intellectually and my art is an expression of my concept of nature. When I choose my composition I sacrifice detail in order to improve the overall effect of the composition. It is the effect of nature that is important and not the descriptive detail of the landscape. I concentrate on the emotional expression or the aesthetic ideas that forms in nature may suggest. I do not feel obliged to represent nature realistically; this gives me the freedom to experiment with form, design and color.
Estifanos Solomon
"Live it up with Cobuqa's Finest Burgers":
Frankfurt take-off burgerAmsterdam-high cheese burgerSingapore-bay chicken burgerIstanbul-joy lamb burgerBlue Nile fish burger
All served with...French fries!
There are also sandwiches (from Seoul and Bombay) and a Sweet Dreams English Cake for dessert.
In the reign of Lalibala, near about the 1200, there was a great persecution in Egypt against the Christians, after the Saracen conquest, and especially against the masons, builders, and hewers of stone, who were looked upon by the Arabs as the greatest of abominations; this prince opened an asylum in his dominions to all fugitives of that kind, of whom he collected a prodigious number. Having before him as specimens the ancient works of the Troglodytes [according to ancient Greek sources - north African cave-dwelling hermits], he directed a number of churches to be hewn out of the solid rock in his native country of Lasta [where Lalibela is situated], where they remain untouched to this day, and where they will probably continue till the latest posterity.Large columns within are formed out of the solid rock, and every species of ornament preserved, that would have been executed in buildings of separate and detached stones, above ground. This prince undertook to realize the favourite pretensions of the Abyssinians, to the power of turning the Nile out of its course, so that it should no longer be the cause of the fertility of Egypt, now in possession of the enemies of his religion.We may imagine, if it was in the power of man to accomplish this undertaking, it could have fallen into no better hands than those to whom Lalibala gave the execution of it ; people driven from their native country by thofe Saracens who now were reaping the benefits of the river, in the places of those they had forced to seek habitations far from the benefit and pleafure afforded by its stream.This prince did not adopt the wild idea of turning the course of the Nile out of its present channel; upon the possibility or impossibility of which, the argument (so warmly and for so long agitated) always most improperly turns.His idea was to famish Egypt: and, as the fertility of that country depends not upon the ordinary stream, but the extraordinary increase of it by the tropical rains, he is laid to have found, by an exact survey and calculation, that there ran on the summit, or highest part of the country, several rivers which could be intercepted by [mines], and their stream directed into the low country southward, instead of joining the Nile, augmenting it and running northward. By this he found he should be able so to disappoint its increase, that it never would rise to a height proper to fit Egypt for cultivation.And thus far he was warranted in his ideas of succeeding (as I have been informed by the people of that country), that he did intersect and carry into the Indian Ocean, two very large rivers, which have ever since flowed that way, and he was carrying a level to the Lake Zaway, where many rivers empty themselves in the beginning of the rains, which would have effectually diverted the course of them all, and could not but in some degree diminish the current below.Death, the ordinary enemy of all these stupendous Herculean undertakings, interposed too here, and put a stop to this enterprize of Lalibala.But Amha Iayesus, prince of Shoa (in whose country part of these immense works were) a young man of great understanding, and with whom I lived several months in the most intimate friendship at Gondar, assured me that they were visible to this day; and that they were of a kind whose use could not be mistaken that he himfelf had often visited them, and was convinced the undertaking was very possible with such hands, and in the circumstances things then were.He told me likewise, that, in a written account which he had seen in Shoa, it was said that this prince was not interrupted by death in his undertaking, but persuaded by the monks, that if a greater quantity of water was let down into the dry kingdoms of Hadea, Mara, and Adel, increasing in population every day, and, even now, almost equal in power to Abyssinia itself, these barren kingdoms would become the garden of the world; and such a number of Saracens, dislodged from Egypt by the first appearance of the Nile's failing, would fly thither:...that they would not only withdraw those countries from their obedience, but be strong enough to over-run the whole kingdom of Abyssinia.Upon this, as Amha Eyesus informed me, Lalibala gave over his first scheme, which was the famishing of Egypt; and that his next was employing the men in subterraneous churches ; a useless expence, but more level to the understanding of common men than the former.Don Roderigo de Lima, ambassador from the king of Portugal, in 1522 saw the remains of these vast works, and travelled in them several days, as we learn from Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of that embassy*, which we shall take notice of in its proper place.
