Solo show
Roots of Resilience: Tesfaye Urgessa
20 Sep 2025 — 1 Feb 2026 at Sainsbury Centre
· Norwich
The Sainsbury Centre presents "Roots of Resilience", the first museum solo exhibition dedicated to Tesfaye Urgessa. Curated by John Kenneth Paranada, this landmark 2025–2026 show brings together works by the Ethiopian-born, internationally acclaimed painter whose large-scale figurative canvases confront themes of identity, displacement, and human endurance.
Urgessa's distinctive style fuses expressive brushwork with a deeply personal iconography, drawing on his experiences growing up in Addis Ababa and his subsequent life in Europe. The exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to trace the full arc of his artistic development and to engage with one of the most compelling voices in contemporary painting today.
Urgessa's distinctive style fuses expressive brushwork with a deeply personal iconography, drawing on his experiences growing up in Addis Ababa and his subsequent life in Europe. The exhibition offers visitors a rare opportunity to trace the full arc of his artistic development and to engage with one of the most compelling voices in contemporary painting today.
About the artist
Tesfaye Urgessa
1983
Tesfaye Geleta Urgessa is an Ethiopian-born painter. He is from Addis Ababa, and has been based in Germany since 2009.
About the artist →About the venue
Sainsbury Centre
· Norwich
The Sainsbury Centre is an art museum located on the campus of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. The building, which contains a collection of world art, was one of the first major public buildings to be designed by the architects Norman Foster and Wendy Cheesman, completed in 1978…