Intimate and personal human relationships often lie at the heart of Yasmeen Fekak's work, reconstructed through materials that have been forgotten or were never preserved. To Mantegbosh (2026) is a multimedia installation forming part of an ongoing series that originated from a body of correspondence exchanged by the artist's aunt, Saidi Abdulkader, with family and friends between the 1980s and the early 2000s.
This turbulent period was marked by the Eritrean War of Independence (1961-1991), during which her letters travelled between Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Italy and Eritrea, following routes disrupted by the upheavals of war: interrupted journeys, letters held in transit and correspondence delayed or lost. These convoluted trajectories become symbols of displacement, dispossession and migration.
The work focuses on a specific letter written to the artist's aunt by her friend Mantegbosh Berhane, from whom the installation takes its title. In the letter, dated 1985, Mantegbosh asks for a photograph and an address in the hope of keeping their correspondence alive – a request that, sadly, never received a reply. Through conversations with her aunt, the artist reconstructs this story and the memories it carries, together with the enduring desire to find her lost friend.
This desire is reflected in the structure of the work itself: a megaphone amplifies and projects outwards the voice at its centre – the voice of the artist's aunt reaching towards Mantegbosh. At the heart of the installation is the original handwritten letter, folded into the shape of a paper aeroplane and still symbolically searching for somewhere to land. Beside it, an Ethiopian postage stamp, once attached to the envelope and later recovered from a collector, indicates the place from which the letter was sent. Mirrored panels multiply what they contain, their reflections evoking the multiplicity of these stories.
To Mantegbosh investigates how broader geopolitical constellations and the legacies of the post-war period within the Eritrean context can be traced through intimate personal histories. Voices fractured by war and oppression are recovered through unconventional private and family archives – the kinds of materials often absent from official records. The installation is not only an attempt to mend an emotional bond that was abruptly severed; it also becomes a catalyst and amplifier for all the voices forgotten by history, not only Mantegbosh's. In this way, Yasmeen Fekak's work confronts us with an urgent question: who decides what is preserved, and whose memory has the right to survive?
Yasmeen Fekak (b. 1995, Riyadh) is an Eritrean artist who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and now divides her time between Riyadh and Milan. Her practice centres on archival research understood as a living, affective medium. She works with materials that have remained outside official systems of preservation – including personal letters, audio cassettes, family photographs and voice notes – to create installations rooted in her personal history of migration.
She is currently completing an MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan) and, alongside her studies, works as a creative strategy consultant in the cultural sector. She is also the founder of Aghrab_Art Collective, a platform dedicated to cross-border storytelling and collaborative cultural production.
Text by Mirta Gianocca
