Ethiopia
Impressions from Addis Ababa

01.11. - 05.11.2021

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  • Group picture of the workshop participants with the trainers. © Goethe-Institut
  • A workshop participant presenting his story. © Goethe-Institut
  • A workshop participant presents his comic panels to the group. © Goethe-Institut
  • A workshop participant presents her comic to the group. © Goethe-Institut
  • A workshop participant explains his comic to the group. © Goethe-Institut
An exchange of different skills and backgrounds. The AFRICOMICS workshop in Addis Ababa was led by Ethiopian trainer Yihenew Worku and German trainer Birgit Weyhe. 11 artists, including one from South Sudan, participated in the workshop. With their comics, they tried to capture their own thoughts on the topic and to “imagine the world at its best” from the perspective of culture, religion, science and technology, magic, migration, war, family, etc.

 

The workshop facilitators

Selbstportrait des Künstlers Yihenew Worku © Yihenew Worku
Yihenew Worku - Painter, Comics book artist, Writer. In 1999, he graduated from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts. He gained experience by drawing comics for various private newspapers. Currently he is working on some comic books that focus on health and gender issues. Some of his cartoons are published in different international catalogs.  “Freedom of Expression” an international cartoon contest in Norway, selected him for the “Honorable Mention Awards” in June 2017. Furthermore, he made various illustrations and designs for many children books. In general, he writes short stories, novels and scripts and is participating in different art exhibitions. The short documentary film “Comics/Graphic Novel in Ethiopia” is one of his works for the AfriComics project.  



Bilder der Künstlerin Birgit Weyhe. © Vera Drebusch Birgit Weyhe was born in Munich in 1969. She spent her childhood in East Africa and studied literature and history in Konstanz and Hamburg. In 1997 she obtained her Magister Artium. After studying illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, she has worked as a freelance illustrator and comic artist in Hamburg. Her graphic novels have been nominated for several awards in Germany, France and Japan and her comic "Madgermanes" received the Bertholt Leibinger Stiftung Comic Book Award in 2015 and the Max-und-Moritz-Preis as best German-language comic in 2016. From 2017 to 2019, she published a monthly comic series "Lebenslinien" in Berlin's "Tagesspiegel." Weyhe's work has been shown in exhibitions in Germany and abroad and has been published in a wide variety of international magazines and anthologies. On behalf of the Goethe-Institut, she has given workshops in numerous countries and participated in an artist exchange in Sao Paulo and Helsinki. Since 2012, she has taught as a guest lecturer at various German and US-American universities.​​​​​​​
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