Aïda Muluneh's Homebound: A Journey in Photography & Addis Foto Fest: Nine Years Survey

I wish I were visiting this exhibition in Sharjah, enjoying the experience of viewing art alongside others. But I’m not. Like most, I’m sheltering at home from a pandemic that has left us anxious and lusting for the before times of physical connections with art and people.1 For many, the virtual world has proven a feeble shadow of its gloriously three-dimensional counterpart. What does it mean to virtually experience a tangible exhibition in sensorial stillness, ourselves homebound in a very different way? Thanks to a virtual immersive 360° tour by Virtualeyes.ae on the Matterport 3D Showcase platform, Homebound: A Journey in Photography and Addis Foto Fest: Nine Years Survey are accessible from anywhere, at any hour. Originally scheduled to open March 23, 2020, the digital tour was created following the exhibition’s postponement. Bilingual in person, the virtual experience exists in Arabic and English-language versions. The presentation comprises two intertwined exhibitions. Galleries 1–4 present a mid-career survey of Muluneh’s fine arts and photojournalistic images curated by Salah M. Hassan with Sataan Al-Hassan (associate curator) of the Africa Institute of Sharjah (collaborative organizer of the exhibition with the Sharjah Art Museum and Sharjah Museums Authority). It is the first offering of Muluneh’s work in Sharjah, and her largest solo museum exhibition to date; works were mostly produced following her 2007 return to Ethiopia. The remaining four galleries comprise Addis Foto Fest: Nine Years Survey, curated by Aïda Muluneh. Available on the AI’s website as a PDF, the colorfully-designed bilingual catalogue replicates the checklist and wall didactics. An artist’s talk was presented digitally (Hassan 2020). Homebound includes 77 fine art and photojournalistic photographs.2 The exhibition does not diachronically chart Muluneh’s artistic evolution. Viewers must consider for themselves the internal themes and feedback loops of her oft-fantastical compositions. “Art” images are uniformly presented as white-framed large-scale prints, generally 80 cm square. In contrast, her documentary work is framed in black, and presented at variable scales. The latter framing and sizing conventions are also (above) 1 Installation view of works from the series The Memory of Hope, The Distant Gaze, The World is 9, and Past/Forward. Photo: Virtual tour screenshot by the author