Tegene Kunbi was born in 1980 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He studied Painting and Art Education at the Fine Arts School of the University of Addis Ababa, graduating in 2004, and later lectured at Kotebe College Academy, nurturing a passion for color, texture, and abstraction. In 2008, he received the DAAD scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies at Universität der Künste Berlin, earning an MFA in 2011. Since then, Kunbi has been working between Addis Ababa and Berlin, developing a practice that merges his Ethiopian heritage with contemporary abstraction.

Kunbi is celebrated for his richly layered abstract paintings, where bold geometric forms and saturated colors converge to explore memory, materiality, and migration. His work reflects a dialogue between cultural inheritance and diasporic experience, often referencing Ethiopian textile traditions through visual metaphors of warp and weft. As Kunbi explains, “Colour is a vocabulary I use to give voice to aspects of my cultural heritage. Each hue is a conversation with the next, producing a sense of harmony and tension.”

His exhibition record spans Europe, Africa, and Asia, with notable solo shows including Warp and Weft (Milan, 2022), Tessellations Through Time (Paris, 2023), and Dripping Time, Fading Memory (Milan, 2025).

In 2022, he was awarded the Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor at Dak’Art Biennale, recognizing his distinctive contribution to contemporary African art. Kunbi’s work interrogates the interplay of place, diaspora, and abstraction, forging a visual language that is at once rooted and transnational, resonating across cultures and geographies.