EVAN Launches as a Global Home for Ethiopian Visual Artists

After three years of planning, consultation, and community building, the Ethiopian Visual Artists Network (EVAN) has officially launched as a global home for Ethiopian visual artists.

The network was founded in close partnership with the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia's most prestigious institution for visual arts education, and opens its doors with over 400 founding members spanning 18 countries.

A Long Time Coming

The idea for EVAN emerged from a simple but urgent need: Ethiopian visual artists, despite their extraordinary talent and rich cultural heritage, lacked a unified platform to connect with each other and with the global art world.

Over the past three years, the founding team conducted interviews with artists across Ethiopia and the diaspora, held community workshops in Addis Ababa, Washington D.C., London, and Toronto, and worked closely with the Alle School faculty to design a platform that truly serves artists.

400+ Founding Members

The network launches with 400+ founding members (painters, sculptors, printmakers, iconographers, photographers, and digital artists) from Ethiopia and the global diaspora. Each founding member has a dedicated profile page on the platform.

We invite all Ethiopian visual artists to join the network and help build the most comprehensive archive of Ethiopian visual art in the world.