What remains by Daniel Abera
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylic , marker and collage on canvas
Dimensions: 100 x 100 cm
Year: 2026
Price: $2500.00 USD
Status: available
What remains after a gathering ends? For me, it is never simply the objects left behind. It is the warmth held in a chair, the echo of conversation around a table, and the quiet evidence that people once met here, exchanged stories, and belonged to one another. In this work, I imagined a place suspended between memory and the present. Stacked chairs, patterned forms, vessels, flowers, and fragments of architecture gather like keepsakes from a life in motion. I used acrylic, marker, and collage to build the scene in layers, allowing lines and textures to overlap as memories do. The vivid blues and greens carry openness and renewal, while the warm reds, oranges, and yellows preserve a sense of human presence. Nothing sits entirely still. The composition feels crowded, improvised, and alive, as though the space is waiting to be inhabited again. “What remains” is my reflection on absence, resilience, and the traces we leave in ordinary places. I hope viewers enter this imagined world slowly and discover something familiar within it: a remembered room, a shared meal, or the tender realization that even when people leave, their presence can remain.
Why collect this work?
Stacked chairs, patterned panels, vessels and buildings compress into a shallow field, presenting the aftermath of gathering as active accumulation rather than emptiness.
- Abera states that his practice examines memory and collective experience through ordinary environments. That intention focuses attention here on familiar objects as possible traces of social use, rather than direct portraits of the absent people.
- The photograph shows repeated chair frames rising at left, while vessels, flowers and patterned forms spread across horizontal tables. Strong dark contours distinguish motifs, but persistent overlaps unsettle the boundaries between furniture, textiles, architecture and reflection.
- The catalogue records acrylic, marker and collage on canvas. Together, these media permit broad colour fields, emphatic drawn edges and abrupt pattern changes, although the photograph cannot establish the collage’s physical construction or surface texture.
- Dated 2026 and measuring 100 by 100 cm, the work extends still life beyond isolated possessions. Its crowded structure proposes that absence may be pictured through surplus, with used objects sustaining a social scene after its participants have gone.
About the Artist
Daniel Abera
Daniel Abera is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: Mixed media painting. Based in Addis ababa, ET.
Nationality: Ethiopian
My practice explores memory, identity, and collective experience through everyday environments and objects.
