David Tadese

David Tadese, born in Sofia in 1998, is a Bulgarian-Ethiopian contemporary artist whose work reflects on identity, memory, and the complexities of contemporary life.

Through his work, David explores themes of vulnerability, transformation, and identity, while reflecting on the complexities of the contemporary world. His practice seeks to reveal layers of memory, emotion, and sensation that often remain hidden beneath everyday experience.

Working through a process of simultaneous destruction and construction, he creates images that fragment and reassemble into new visual structures. Symbols, textures, and impulsive lines overlap and interact, balancing spontaneity with control. In this constantly evolving visual language, art becomes a living organism, dynamic, unpredictable, and perpetually in flux, where chaos finds its own order and fragmentation gives rise to new forms of wholeness.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDUCATION

2023 – 2025
Master of Fine Arts in Painting, National Academy of Art, Sofia, Bulgaria

2018 – 2023
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, National Academy of Art, Sofia, Bulgaria

2013 – 2017
Graphic Arts, National School of Fine Arts "Iliya Petrov", Sofia, Bulgaria

EXHIBITIONS & AWARDS

December 2023
“Disintegration” — Solo Exhibition, Bobbina Cultural Space, Sofia, Bulgaria

November 2023 – January 2024
Graduate Painting Exhibition 2023, Kraków, Poland

April 2023
Award in the Academy-Wide Drawing Competition, National Academy of Art, Sofia, Bulgaria

April 2023
Award in the “Rediscover Rotary” Competition, Sofia, Bulgaria

March 2023
Participant in The Artist at Play Vol. Glass, Bobbina Cultural Space, Sofia, Bulgaria

2016
Award in the Artistic Drawing Competition, Sofia, Bulgaria