“I have this interest from a few years ago, of body versus soul. My latest work embodies the theme of no body and no faces, only the garb that adorns the body of a figure. The fabric and the clothes have value. In Ethiopia Muslims and Christians share the culture of covering their heads in a holy place such as a mosque or a monastery, this symbolizes the identity and culture here.”

Leikun Nahusenay was born in 1982 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

He is a self-declared, self-taught artist although he did his graduation from the Ale School of Fine Arts in 2006  and Teferi Mekonnen School in 2011. His multi-discipline practice is based in Addis Ababa, where he works from the Nas Gedame studio.

For Nahusenay, the creation of a work of art comes from the mind and the heart. His works are born from pious meditations and are meditations themselves. His recent pastel drawings are concerned with the presence and absence of the spirit in the human body and its connections with the spiritual. 

He uses the technique called subtraction which entails cutting into the painting and extracting lines of color till a form is recognised.

He calls himself the line artist and draws and redraws lines as meditations while simultaneously being inspired by music.