Aïda Muluneh: ‘Spirituality is a cultural form in Ethiopia’

Aïda Muluneh was born in Ethiopia in 1974. She studied film at Howard University in Washington DC and worked as a photojournalist before turning to art photography. Her bold visual work explores African identity and culture, often drawing attention to environmental and social issues. Muluneh has won various awards and was the first black woman to co-curate the Nobel peace prize exhibition. Her UK touring exhibition Nationhood: Memory and Hope is at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow until 8 February and she has a solo show at Efie Gallery in Dubai from 17 January until 5 April.

‘Studio B’ Show by Farhad in Black Cats

I listen to a very wide selection of music and spend a lot of time digging around online. I came across Farhad Mehrad randomly on YouTube – he was an Iranian singer popular in the 1960s and 70s. The video I watched was a cover of Ray Charles’s I Believe to My Soul. It was fascinating: he’s just casually playing with the band with a cigarette in his mouth, and the way he plays is so soulful. It’s a beautiful rendition. You can find the whole album on Spotify.

Olten, Switzerland

Last summer I was invited to the international photo festival in Olten, a scenic town between Zurich and Basel. The festival was super interesting, with a lot of big names, and I like that it was bringing photography to a community that might not otherwise have much access to it. I enjoy exploring smaller towns rather than big cities, because the people seem friendlier and it’s easy to get around. As part of the festival they took us hang-gliding over the town – that’s a memory that will stick with me for quite some time.

Il Pappagallo in Dakar, Senegal

I enjoy Senegalese food and often try to find it when I’m travelling – I remember eating at a very good Senegalese restaurant when I was in Mali for the Bamako biennale. This restaurant in Dakar, however, serves Italian food. It’s at a small boutique hotel called Seku Bi. The Senegalese chef trained in Italy and cooks pasta really well. I love ravioli, so that’s my go-to. If I can have ravioli, I’m very happy.

The Rising Dawn (2025, dir. Nadi Saddy and Nuits Balnéaires)

This was a really nice surprise: a short documentary by two young film-makers from Côte d’Ivoire. It’s looking at the local surf culture, specifically following the story of a guy called Souleymane Sidibé who moved to Assinie, a coastal town in the south-east, and started surfing. It’s a mix of fine art and documentary style, with a poetry to each scene that I hadn’t really seen in documentary film-making coming out of the continent. A lot of people don’t know that these surf cultures exist in West Africa, so that’s interesting too.

So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ

This is a book I’ve loved for many years, written by the Senegalese author Mariama Bâ in 1979 and recently re-released, offering a fresh print for a new generation of readers. It’s a short book, beautifully written, that takes the form of a letter between two friends. It talks about the challenges of womanhood, because as African women we are between tradition and modernity, so it’s asking how we negotiate these two points. It’s still relevant.

Fasika

Last year I was installing an exhibition in Addis Ababa during Fasika, which is our Ethiopian Easter. It fell on 20 April and it’s preceded by a 55-day fast when everyone’s on a vegan diet. When I first got there, I wasn’t fasting, but at some point it gets embedded into your daily life and you have to go with the flow – spirituality is a cultural form in Ethiopia. At the end, there are big celebrations with lots of traditional meat dishes such as doro wat (chicken stew). Everyone wears white. It’s amazing to see.