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Tesfaye Urgessa

TESFAYE URGESSA

The Lingering Departure White Cube 9 September–20 October 2026 Hong Kong
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Press Release

Tesfaye Urgessa presents ‘The Lingering Departure’, his first exhibition with the gallery since joining in August 2026. Bringing together paintings and works on paper created over the past year in Addis Ababa, and Stuttgart, Germany, the exhibition reflects on themes of migration, familial relationships and community, as reflections on an increasingly unsettled socio-political world.

Urgessa’s densely peopled tableaux take the human figure as their point of departure. Bodies appear pressed against one another, even enmeshed with their domestic surroundings, and resist settling into any single or coherent narrative. The figures remain in what the artist describes as ‘a state of metamorphosis’, at once altered and deconstructed. As the artist notes: ‘It’s not about what I want. It’s not about what the painting wants. It’s somewhere in the middle. We constantly negotiate.’

Urgessa’s paintings draw upon shifting registers of human experience, from passing observations and the wider news cycle, to conversations with friends and his wife’s work with newly arrived migrants. Above all, Urgessa’s paintings embody his belief that ‘painting should imitate life itself’.

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Installation Views

Exhibition view: Tesfaye Urgessa, The Lingering Departure, White Cube (9 September–20 October 2026). Courtesy White Cube.
Exhibition view: Tesfaye Urgessa, The Lingering Departure, White Cube (9 September–20 October 2026). Courtesy White Cube.

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About the Gallery

An international art powerhouse, White Cube was established in 1993 in London by art dealer Jay Jopling. In its space on Duke Street, it served as the early exhibition venue for many now internationally acclaimed British artists, including Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George, Rachel Kneebone and Antony Gormley, who still show with the gallery today.

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Address
50 Connaught Road
Central
Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 7pm
(1)
Hong Kong 50 Connaught Road
White Cube contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong
White Cube
50 Connaught Road, Central, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
+852 259 220 00
http://whitecube.com

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 7pm
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