Where we meet 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
“Where We Meet” grew from my fascination with markets as places of exchange, not only of objects, but of stories, gestures, memories, and belonging. I wanted to capture that familiar feeling of wandering among stalls and suddenly sensing that every pattern, instrument, flower, and handmade object carries the presence of someone who made it, used it, or loved it. I built the scene through acrylic, marker, and collage, allowing each medium to contribute its own rhythm. The bright greens suggest the energy of gathering, while layered blues hold the surrounding city like a distant memory. Flowing fabrics, wooden structures, vessels, and musical forms create a visual chorus, full of movement yet grounded in everyday life. The tents rise almost like sheltering wings, bringing many individual worlds together beneath them. For me, this work is about the beauty of meeting across difference. It celebrates the places where culture becomes tangible and where strangers briefly share the same path. I hope the painting invites viewers to linger, discover small details, and remember a place where they felt welcomed, curious, and connected to something larger than themselves.
Why collect this work?
Patterned cloth forms a dense screen across this market scene, dividing the square composition into narrow passages where exchange is registered through overlap, obstruction and proximity.
- In his supplied statement, Daniel Abera places the work within a Market Series concerned with Ethiopian everyday life, memory and collective experience. Here, that intention is supported by the market’s compressed arrangement rather than by narrative incident.
- Tall textiles interrupt sightlines while tents, figures, vessels, instruments and wooden racks accumulate in stacked bands. Shallow recession makes looking resemble navigating between crowded stalls, with goods often more visually prominent than people.
- The documented combination of acrylic, marker and collage allows broad colour fields, linear contours and patterned sections to coexist. These contrasting registers help separate individual objects while maintaining the scene’s overall density.
- This work supports close comparison between a market’s physical structures and its social organization. Canopies provide shelter, racks regulate display and narrow routes direct movement, showing how collective gathering is shaped through material arrangements.
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.
