One too many times

(August 1- August 22)

A group poetry exhibition

In August, Studio 11 opened its first poetry exhibition, a shift from images to language, and a deliberate one. The show grew out of a conversation with poet Tigist Mezgebu and expanded into a group exhibition featuring five female poets and writers named Tigist Mezgebu, Enanu Girma Melka, Bethel Getu, Bezawit Zerihun, and Deborah Atnafu. The focus is grief, not as something to solve, but as something that needs room. That framing comes directly from discussions with the poets and the curatorial note developed for the show.

The poems engage the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, without treating them as a sequence. Instead, they appear as states that overlap and repeat. Each poem is printed on canvas and suspended from the ceiling, intentionally resembling worn, crumpled paper. The material choice reflects how grief often shows up, fragile, uneven, unfinished.

Visitors are encouraged to move through the space slowly and decide for themselves which poem holds which emotional state.Alongside the exhibition, the gallery hosted weekly open mic nights, opening the floor to poets and visitors to read, respond, and sit with their own words. These sessions extended the exhibition beyond the walls and reinforced its central idea, that grief is communal, often unspoken, and deserves time and presence. This reporting is based on the exhibition text, installation design, and observations from the open mic sessions held during the run of the show.

You can find more information about current exhibition and the artworks on display on the studio 11 website.