Yatreda ያጥሬዳ, a family collective from Ethiopia, founded by creative director Kiya Tadele (Ethiopia, 1993), has built an astonishing artistic career in just four years: from minting their first series, Kingdoms of Ethiopia, in 2021 to LACMA announcing the acquisition of four works in 2025. It is a head-spinning trajectory, and Load is proud to present a concise survey of Yatreda’s work and their singular approach to video art in their first European solo exhibition.

Rooted in tizita—a profound sense of nostalgia and longing for the past—their practice weaves childhood memories, oral histories, and folk tales with the rich heritage and legends that shape contemporary Ethiopian identity. By bridging ancestral knowledge and digital innovation, Yatreda invites viewers to contemplate the cyclical nature of history, ensuring that Ethiopia’s cultural legacy is both celebrated in the present and safeguarded for the future.

Yatreda ያጥሬዳ is known for its black-and-white short loops, in which people move very slightly, creating the impression that a photograph has come to life. Many of their motion portraits feature historical costumes and jewellery, either sourced from antique shops or sewn by members of the collective, and are grounded in research. 

Yatreda’s ያጥሬዳ Strong Hair documents the rich diversity of traditional hairstyles found across Ethiopia, honouring the labour and artistry embedded in hair culture. Strong Hair received the Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (2022) and was later exhibited at Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany). Also featured is The End of Innocence from Adam and Hewan that reimagines the Genesis narrative by placing Ethiopia — and Africa more broadly — at the birthplace of humanity. The work introduced many of the themes that would define the collective’s later practice: origin, memory, moral tension and the quiet drama contained in stillness. 

Another work, My Land, 1896, captures the final moments of the Battle of Adwa, when Ethiopia defeated Italy’s invading colonial army and became the only African nation to resist colonisation on the battlefield. The loop shows a Black Ethiopian warrior delivering the final blow to a white Italian soldier — an image still rare and unsettling within dominant visual histories. Precisely because of this inversion, the work confronts colonial narratives head-on and insists on anti-colonial resistance as a central, not marginal, part of discourse.

“The coffee you drink while running will disappear” ሲሮጡ የጠጡት ቡና ሲሮጡ ይጠፋል, premiered earlier this year at Loop Fair, offers an alternative to the Western temporal regime, in which time has been commodified and coffee reduced to a stimulant of productivity. Shot in a single take, it translates the Ethiopian coffee ceremony into a living score where movement, sound, and scent converge. As incense bridges material and spiritual realms, and the masenqo fills the space with nostalgic melodies that suspend time, the ceremony culminates in a collective dance: an eruption of joy, proposing togetherness, rhythm, and embodied awareness as counter-models to introspective and extractive time.

Written by Anna Leven