Ethiopia

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller’s Ethiopia is widely considered the first Pan-Africanist artwork created in the United States. It provides a visual embodiment of the New Negro Movement—an era during the 1920s characterized by an increased recognition of artistic and cultural production by Black people, and a consciousness of racial heritage and pride.

W. E. B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson commissioned Fuller to create Ethiopia for the Negro Exhibit in the America’s Making Exposition. An image of the sculpture graced the cover of the exhibit’s publication describing it as, “A Symbolic Statue of the EMANCIPATION of the NEGRO RACE.” Fuller’s work links the cultural achievements of ancient Egypt as well as the Ethiopian resistance to colonial rule to a narrative of African American struggle and achievement, using the past to guide and critique the present.

Painted plaster sculpture of a female figure standing with her right hand over her heart, her left arm straight against her side with her hand extended out. Her head is turned over her left shoulder. From the hips down her legs are bound as if mummified. She wears a veil that is draped over her head and falls over her shoulders and down her back. The veil is shaped to resemble a pharaonic headdress. The figure stands on a rectangular, slightly wedge shaped pedestal. The sculpture is painted to look like copper complete with a simulated greenish patina.