about

Ezra Wube was born and raised in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. Ezra moved to the United States at the age of 18. In 2003, Ezra was awarded the Massachusetts Annual Black Achievement Award and held his first one-person show at the Dreams of Freedom Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, curated by Emily Sloat Shaw. In 2004, he received his Bachelor's of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art. Upon graduation, Ezra received a Dondis and Godine Travel Fellowship to conduct research in Ethiopia on folktales and traditional lore. In 2006, he held his second solo show "Story Telling", at the United Nations in New York. The following year, Ezra was part of the "Ethiopian Millennium" art show at the Blackburn Gallery of Howard University in Washington, DC. In 2008, Ezra participated in "Reflections in Exile: Five Contemporary African Artists Respond to Social Injustice" at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasett, co-curated by Candice Smith Corby, "Here to There" at the South Seattle Community College in Seattle, Washington, and "Abyssinia to Harlem and Back" at the Canvas Paper and Stone Gallery in New York. In 2009, Ezra received the Pamela Joseph Art Scholarship while working on his Master's of Fine Arts thesis at Hunter College in New York. He also participated in "The Happening: Kinetics as Art Object" at the Rush Arts Gallery in New York, curated by Nico Wheadon, "MA selects MFA" at Hunter College, "Freeze Frame" throughout Miami, Florida, and the Bina Film Festival in New York. In 2010, Ezra participated in a group art show at BAM in Brooklyn, New York, curated by Kimberly Gant. After completing his MFA, Ezra was commissioned to direct and animate a television advertisement for Standard Chartered Bank as part of a global campaign titled "Here for Good". In 2011 Ezra held his first screening at Addis Atlier, "Memory and Process", Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, curated by Leo Kosm. He also participated in group shows, "Exhibition LÚMEN_EX 2011", The Museum of Extremadura and Ibero American, Contemporary Art (MEIAC) of Badajoz, Spain, "PVE: Performance Video Event", University of the Street, NY, NY, "The Video Show", Raritan Valley Community College, NJ, curated by Lydia Grey.

"The effect of mass migrations has been the creation of radically new types of human beings. People who root themselves in ideas rather than in places, in memories as much as in material things, people who are obliged to define themselves, because they are so defined by others - by their otherness, people in whose deepest selves strange fusions occur up precedented unions between where they were and where they find themselves. The migrant suspects realty having experienced several ways of being, he understands their illusory nature. To see things plainly, you have to cross a frontier." Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands.