Echoes of Devotion is a large-scale mural by Scarborough artist Anthony Gebrehiwot that looks over Queen’s campus. This public art intervention acknowledges the strength of those who came before and echoes a rising new consciousness, drawing inspiration from Gebrehiwot’s various research strands. This includes participation in AGNES’s Vulindlela! Procession, research with the Lang Collection of African Art, and engagement with Winsom Winsom, the Ashanti Maroon multi-media spiritual artist.

 Echoes of Devotion is a powerful call to activate and strengthen an African identity outside the continent, while elevating the Agnes’s collection of African art. Multiple generations and timeframes exist in this piece: the present in the figure of Winsom Winsom, the past in the central Ansante Akauba figure and the Iroke Ifa divination tappers, while the future radiates outward through rising gold dust. Together, these elements reflect the possibility of raising our consciousness and understanding. We are called to look to a past that is rich in creativity, hope and wonder in order to imagine new possible futures.

Anthony Gebrehiwot is an award-winning artist and community leader whose creative lens re-visions photography as an ongoing dialogue of social change. Gebrehiwot seeks to communicate through digital means, without language in an intimate way. Through his art, he portrays the vocabulary of race, masculinity, history, perception, and vulnerability. Combining contrasting landscapes, Black bodies and raw human emotion, Gebrehiwot sensitively explores the affective power of Black bodies in confronting the viewer’s humanity.

Hero image: Anthony Gebrehiwot, Echoes of Devotion (detail), 2024, digital image on vinyl. Courtesy of the artist.