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Olani Ewunnet is an Ethiopian-American interdisciplinary artist working across drawing, sound, video, and social practice. Her work has been presented at institutions including the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, National Sawdust (NY), BBC Radio 4, Dhaka Art Summit, BOZAR (Brussels), and SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin). She holds a Master of Design in Urbanism, Landscape, and Ecology with distinction from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban & Environmental Policy from Occidental College.
Ewunnet’s practice draws upon her training in urban planning and her roots in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Through the interplay of image, sound and space, her work explores contemporary urbanity and imagines futures beyond sight, bridging African sonic, spatial, and visual cultures with urban ecologies, speculative narratives, indigenous knowledge systems.
Her collaborative projects engage individuals and communities to interrogate notions of land, collectivity, and commodity, often foregrounding local materials and knowledge systems. Her collaborations, ranging from public infrastructure in Burkina Faso with architect Francis Kéré to accessible landscape design for musician esperanza spalding, exemplify a practice that transcends disciplines, elevating local materials and epistemologies as sites of transformation.
Through her multifaceted practice, Ewunnet challenges the divides between art, ecology, and community, proposing a vision of interconnectedness rooted in cultural transformation.