Westward Bound Western Bond is a memoir of my experience as an Ethiopian who left her country as a young child due to the Ethiopian Revolution in the early 1970s. I am an artist, I and bring an artist's eye to my writings, and especially on how I became a staunch advocate of Western art and culture.
My vision is unique because I have a non-Western view on the West, one which is positive and optimistic. My art and imagination thrived because of my Western experience and education. I wish to share these views.
My family and I left Ethiopia in 1973, a year before the “Ethiopian Revolution” which occurred in 1978, when Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed and a communist regime ran the country for almost two decades. I was ten years old. My father secured a post in UNESCO in Paris.
My brothers and I initially attended school in Paris, but our parents sent us to England to boarding school a year later.
It was in Paris that I learned to love art, and Western art, through my own independent studies in museums and with books. And my love of nature grew from the beautiful English county of Kent where we went to school. By age eleven, I had acquired a Kodak Instamatic camera with which I documented my French and English surroundings, but with a conscious, artistic eye.
My informal education had taken a Western orientation, but my formal education, upon my father's insistence, was in the sciences. I obtained Bachelor and Masters degrees in the Biological and Health sciences in the United States. While pursuing my PhD, I lived in Mexico for two years working on my field research work The results of my PhD research eventually produced a unique field-testing method which was published in various prestigious academic science and medical journals.
By the end of my doctoral studies, my father obtained permanent residency for us (my two brothers and my mother) in Canada through sponsorship by his brother who lived in Toronto.
In canada, I was finally stable and able to make decisions about my activities without affecting my residency status. In the US, I couldn't work, and I couldn't leave my university program on a Student (F-1) Visa status. In Toronto, I obtained various certificates and qualifications in film and photography. I also studied textile design, and painting and drawing. I was determined to become an artist.
My constant displacement, my rigorous science education, and my artistic training allowed me to ask: What is art? What s beauty? And why is Western beauty and art so singular?
I have tried to answer these questions. Along with my art and design, through which I reflect my Western orientation, I have also written and published articles in journals and blogs on these topics and issues.
This has been my line of inquiry ever since my fateful and fortuitous entry into that city of lights, and my memoir Western Bound, Western Bond attempts to answer these questions in a more complete and personal way through my experiences and insights.
