Ermias Kifleyesus

Ermias Kifleyesus (b. 1974, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, lives and works in Brussels) is an artist and a flâneur whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, writing, installation, performance, and archival gestures.

His improvisational practice draws on an interactive and ever-evolving archive—both participatory and research-based—composed of rejected paintings, traces, and tape markings gathered through conversations and public interventions, for example in telephone booths. Using a self-devised technique, he peels away layers and marks from this collected material, reassembling them into paintings and sculptures. The result is a body of work that embraces instability and opacity, remaining faithful to all that emerges in the cracks of things.

Ermias Kifleyesus – If Spider Threads Collaborate, They Can Tie Up a Lion (2025)
Ermias Kifleyesus – Offering (2025)

• Fobrux

If Spider Threads Collaborate, They Can Tie Up a Lion is an assembled image of Brussels and the Zenne from the perspective of a spider. Offering consists of tapes that Ermias used for years to trace and interact with the scribbles of people in telephone booths.