Surge of interest in Ethiopian culture boosts case for return of treasures, says Sissay
An Ethiopian cultural surge – including a first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the rise of stars such as Ruth Negga and The Weeknd – is making the country’s calls for restitution of looted colonial-era artefacts harder to ignore, according to Lemn Sissay.
The poet and author, who is curating the country’s inaugural Biennale pavilion, where Tesfaye Urgessa’s work will be on show, said the event would be part of a significant cultural push from the east African country and its diaspora over the last two decades.
Sissay said the emergence of Ethiopians such as the Booker-nominated author Maaza Mengiste, the fashion model Liya Kebede, musicians such as Mulatu Astatke, and visual artists including Aïda Muluneh and Julie Mehretu was forming a critical mass that was forcing museums and governments to reassess looted Ethiopian items in their collection, such as those taken after the battle of Maqdala, fought between British and Abyssinian forces in 1868.
He said: “As Ethiopia articulates itself through culture around the world, it becomes less easy to ignore the battle of Maqdala. There were so many looted sacred objects, which means that part of the heart of what it means to be Ethiopian is missing.
“As Ethiopia rises, so does the discussion about what was looted in 1868.”
Sissay told the Guardian the Venice pavilion was also a significant moment for Ethiopia because of its relationship with Italy – a country that occupied it for five years but failed to colonise it. “Ethiopia was never colonised, so we don’t have that relative trauma as a memory bookmark,” he said.
Sissay made the comments in the same week the Guardian reported that Returning Heritage, a not-for-profit organisation, had accused the British Museum of withholding information about items looted from the battle of Maqdala.
The Information Commissioner’s
Office (ICO) confirmed it was investigating the British Museum over claims that it has been secretive about a group of sacred Ethiopian altar tablets that have been in the collection for more than 150 years.
There have been calls for decades for the tablets, or “tabots”, to be repatriated to Ethiopia, and the country’s culture minister requested their return while on a visit to the museum in 2019. Some tabots have already gone back, such as one found in an Edinburgh church 23 years ago.
In February, the Ethiopian government successfully halted the auction of a shield taken from Maqdala in the
UK, while Westminster Abbey agreed “in principle” to return to Ethiopia a sacred tablet it holds.
“[Maqdala] is not going away,” said Sissay. “More than ever, there is a much more sober conversation happening between the British and the Ethiopian authorities, and that’s happening because of the museums in Britain. These are the places where we are assessing what our role is in the world for the next 500 years.”
Nicholas Cullinan was appointed director of the British Museum last week, and the issue of restitution will be one of the biggest problems in his in-tray as he takes over from Hartwig Fischer, who resigned after news broke that hundreds of items had been allegedly stolen from the museum by a member of staff.
Sissay told Today on BBC Radio 4 that alongside a £50m revamp of the institution, “the reimagining of the British Museum may include restitution”, while he called for the 11 wood and stone tabots to be returned to the African country as a symbol of “friendship to the church in Ethiopia”.
He magnetises the camera in the three documentaries about Nick Cave, and particularly since he published Nina Simone’s Gum in 2021 – about his quest to turn a piece of Simone’s stolen chewing gum into a quasi-religious artefact – a kind of iconography has blossomed around him. (He’s even breached pop, working with the 1975 and FKA twigs.) Social media means he can’t help but be aware of it, he says – and he has cast his own hands in silver – but he doesn’t give it much thought. “The thing that more bothers me is just the next thing. Can I do it? That’s the thing that defines you, the latest thing you’ve done.” Walking
for Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto recently helped him “buy land for the parks and feed the monkeys”. Plus, he says, “I just thought, wow, fuck, why not? Coming through the 90s, we had a certain attitude to things like: you don’t do this, don’t put your music here. These days, I think, let’s throw it up in the air a bit and see what happens.”
Never mind iconography: Ellis worries that even talking about Dirty Three’s albums might do them a disservice. “I don’t want to invent something to make it sound interesting,” he says. “The interesting part for me is what people make of it. From my side of things, it’s the act of getting in the studio and pushing yourself.” But the intuitive relationship between the trio, and their refusal to be reined in, four decades into their career, seems the operative part: the embodiment of the idea of love as a catalyst opened up by their new album; the beauty that can arise from listening deeply to one another.
These days, Dirty Three are relatively elder statesmen more likely to play Sydney Opera House than to rile German Pogues fans to the point of violence, as they did in the late 90s. “It’s quite galvanising when you realise you ruffle people’s feathers,” says Ellis. But the way they play together still requires risk-taking. “That doesn’t always work,” he says. “But there’s something precarious about it that’s really thrilling. That was always the thing with Dirty Three – we’d do a show that could be really good or fall flat on its head, but I really like that about it, that it stood or died in the moment.”
The pub’s dinner rush starts, and a young bartender thanks Ellis profusely for his work as he clears our cups. “It’s so nice to be thanked,” says Ellis, taken aback. It reminds me of something he said earlier. “It seems like more than ever, if you go forward with the right intent, with your actions, in your heart, there’s a better chance of passing on something to somebody who could do the same,” he said. “You tell somebody that they look awesome and you can see how it changes them. When somebody says that to you, it changes the way you look out into the world. So yeah – I still get cynical, but it feels like time starts getting precious. And hopefully, I – you – can make that time count.”
• Love Changes Everything is released by Bella Union on 28 June. Dirty Three will perform in Melbourne on 14 and 15 June as part of Rising festival
• This article was amended on 3 April 2024. Ellis is 59, not 69 as previously stated.