Surafel Abebe

b. 1973, Addis Ababa
Lives and works in Sharjah

Surafel Wondimu Abebe is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and Theory at The Africa Institute in Sharjah. Abebe uses academia, performance and media as sites of cultural politics from which to interrogate representational practices. He also engages with performance and embodied historiography in order to respond to global-local predicaments in the present. He is a research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD) at the University of Johannesburg, an editorial member of AGITATE!, a multi-genre online journal at the University of Minnesota, and an associate editor of Pamiętnik Teatralny, a peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on the history and historiography of theatre, drama and performance. He has published articles on performance, revolution, gender and sexual politics and co-edited The Imagined New (or what happens when History is a Catastrophe? (iwalewabooks, 2022). Abebe completed the Inaugural Okwui Enwezor Postdoctoral Fellowship in Visual Arts, Performance Studies, and Critical Humanities from The Africa Institute (2020–2021). He holds a BA in English literature minoring in Political Science and International Relations and an MA in Cultural Studies from Addis Ababa University, where he later served as a lecturer and Deputy Dean of Humanities. Abebe earned a PhD in Performance Historiography from the University of Minnesota (2012–2018). Born in 1973 in Addis Ababa, he lives and works in Sharjah. SAF participation: March Meeting 2023 White Cube (2020) Global Museum Launch Middle East Premiere and Discussion