Dawit L. Petros

Overview
Dawit L. Petros
Dawit L. Petros, Untitled (Epilogue IV), Nefasit, Eritrea, 2019, Archival color pigment prints, 76.2 x 95.3 cm, 30 x 37 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemproary.
Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist born in Eritrea and based in Montreal. Working with installation, photography, research and extensive travels, his practice centres around a critical rereading of the relationship between African histories and European modernism. In recent projects, he employs abstraction as an act of translation to push against naturalised ways of understanding form, colour and subjectivity. By drawing upon forms rooted in diverse histories, Petros' artistic language enables a metaphorically rich articulation of the fluidity of contemporary transnational experiences and attendant issues of displacement, place-making and cultural negotiation.

Recent exhibitions include:
Trace: Formations of Likeness, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2023); As We Rise, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2023); Ozangé, Spanish Biennial of African Photography, Malaga, Spain, (2022); Spazio Disponible, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal (2022); Spazio Disponible, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK (2021); Prospetto a Mare, Art Gallery of Guelph, Guelph, ON (2021); Gaps, holes, fissures, and frictions, Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal, QC (2021); To the Edge of Time, KU Leuven, Belgium (2021); A Recurrrence of Forms, Space 204 Gallery, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN (2020); Spazio Disponibile, University at Buffalo Art Galleries, New York (2020);Spazio Disponible, The Power Plant, Toronto (2020); Here We Are, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (2018); Nowhere Is A Place, Rencontres de Bamako, Bamako Biennale (2017); Prospect.4 The Lotus In Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans (2017); Recent Histories, Walther Collection Project Space, New York (2016); Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2016); The Stranger’s Notebook, Kansas City Art Institute (2016); 56th Venice Biennale international exhibition (2015), The View From Here, Tiwani Contemporary, London (2016); Under Another Name, the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY (2014); Sense of Place, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2013); Earth Matters: The Land As Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, The National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC (2013); and Mimesis, Lianzhou International Photo Festival, China (2011). He was awarded an Independent Study Fellowship at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2012. In 2021 he received the title of Museum of Contemporary Photography Terra Foundation for American Art Fellow and the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Art Photography.
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