The HealersLSHTM logologo: Africa 05 in collaboration with BBC
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Loulou Cherinet
Gera
Cyprien Tokoudagba
Zwelethu Mthethwa
Tracey Rose
Abdoulaye Konate
Festival
Art@LSHTM
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Loulou Cherinet video work

LOULOU CHERINET
Ethiopia/Sweden, b.1970

Born of an Ethiopian father and Swedish mother, Loulou Cherinet worked at the Goteborg Konstmuseum in Sweden before dedicating herself to painting for two years in Indonesia. In 1996, she enrolled at the University School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa later returning to Sweden to study at the art academy. She maintains a vibrant engagement with the world through her work, constantly discovering fresh views onto it. One of an emerging generation of young, women, African artists, Cherinet works primarily with the video medium. She has taken part in exhibitions internationally, including the Sydney Biennale and the 4th Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine in Bamako.

The work featured in the show, 'Bleeding Men' (2003), was shown in the original Africa Remix Exhibition in Dusseldorf in 2004. Shot in Alexandria, it explores the fundamental notions of death and rebirth. We view men bleeding to death in a white room, their dark human blood starkly contrasting with the whiteness of their clothes and surrounds. When they eventually rise they have become new beings, shrouded in virgin white but stained with the blood of experience, to begin a new life with a new wisdom. Community and individuality are here too: an individual's vision - or 'madness' - is sanctified by the inclusion of others. To the viewer, the blood may raise a host of associations from the terror of violence in a world of conflict, to the terror of AIDS - spread through blood. Yet from the draining of the life-liquid can come new beginnings - this is the ultimate role of the healers explored on the other works in the exhibition.