The lecture explores artistic research through Practising Water; Rituals and Engagements, an ongoing body of work that brings together walking, sleeping, storytelling, ritual, conversation, and collective gathering as methods of inquiry. Rather than positioning research as the production of knowledge from a distance, the project considers how knowledge emerges through sustained engagement with people, places, materials, and cultural practices.
Through a close reading of selected works, the session examines how relationships, encounters, and participation shape artistic processes. Water serves as both a material and conceptual framework for exploring questions of memory, attention, ethics, and belonging.
Robel Temesgen is an artist and researcher whose practice explores the relationships between people, place, material culture, and the ecological and spiritual forces that shape forms of presence and knowledge. Working across painting, installation, publication, and performance, he engages with stories, rituals, archives, and everyday encounters as ways of understanding how worlds are formed through both visible and invisible connections.
His work often draws on materials such as goatskin alongside locally situated knowledge, investigating questions of memory, transmission, and cultural repatriation while remaining attentive to the agency of landscapes, water, objects, and spiritual dimensions of life. Rooted in research, collaboration, and collective forms of making, his practice brings together cultural histories, material processes, and speculative ways of imagining shared futures.
Alongside his artistic practice, Temesgen teaches at Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa and has served as a guest professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) in 2024, 2025, and 2026.
