"Ethiopian art is not simply a collection of ancient artifacts but a living narrative." Kiya Tadele, founder and creative director of Yatreda ያጥሬዳ.

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In November of last year, the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) made history with their acquisition of Abyssinian Queen by Yatreda ያጥሬዳ, the Ethiopian familial artist collective. For the first time, the TMA used cryptocurrency (USDC) to purchase and officially acquire an artwork for their permanent collection, with Abyssinian Queen now standing as the fifth digital work in the museum's archive.

When the Atomic Form team heard the news of the acquisition, we approached Calvin Burchfiel, the Technology Lead at the TMA, to gather any online cultural discourse around Abyssinian Queen and save on Atomic Lore. Burchfiel states, "It's incredibly important for future institutions that we capture not just the art, but why the art matters on-chain." Our company's mission is founded on the belief that we need to help citizens of the digital world record significant information permanently. Through a combination of IPFS and Arweave storage, we've successfully saved articles, tweets, and media files about Abyssinian Queen that are now archived forever. 

We felt strongly and urgently that we had to document this art history and the story of how it all happened. This event is an institutional embrace of digital art and a marker in the history of contemporary Ethiopian and Black fine art, led by the creative forces at Yatreda.

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Yatreda is a family-based artist collective from Ethiopia led by cofounder and creative director Kiya Tedele. Yatreda's creative practice has produced perhaps the most recognizable bodies of work in the digital art and NFT space. Black and white photographs and slow-motion videos capture "tizita," a thematic style that evokes nostalgia. Yatreda's body of work communicates a riveting energy that viewers often feel strongly bonded to. We see people dancing or cinematically engaging with mystical beings emerging from the water; it's a feeling that you've seen this story or feeling before. You just can't place where.

Abyssinian Queen is one of several pieces in a collection that bears the same name, a name that is a nod to the legendary queens of ancient Ethiopia. It marks a new direction in Yatreda's work, stepping away from classical Ethiopian history and closer to cultural and childhood memory. With this work, Yatreda is looking to their own collective experience as fodder for art. The TMA writes that, "This turn towards the fantastical serves as a therapeutic counterbalance to the challenge of modernization, and blockchain ensures the lasting celebration and preservation of their Ethiopian heritage."

Yatreda was selected as a member of the TMA Lab's Digital Artist in Residence program, resulting in the project House of Yatreda, a multi-spatial interdisciplinary experience at the museum. As part of the residency, an Ethiopian coffee ceremony was performed within the exhibit, exemplifying a community-focused Ethiopian tradition in stark contrast to the impersonal American consumerist experience. Participants received a glass cup made by the TMA embedded with NFC chips that led to a mint page for Coffee Proverbs; secret messages revealed themselves to participants with notes such as "On the blockchain, history is written in digital stone*.*"

House of Yatreda was also included in an exhibition titled Ethiopia at the Crossroads, documenting 2,000 years of Ethiopian history and includes texts and works from as early as the 15th century.

In the same pursuit of documenting and exhibiting a rich cultural history, we know that the Abyssinian Queen's history will continue to grow and evolve. We built tools to archive this information forever, not just because we can but also because it's important. Regardless of what happens to Artnet, the TMA, and even our own company, all of this lore is saved on-chain, forever. In the face of a continued historical erasure of gender and racial minorities' art, we want to make sure there is permanence in this historical event.

Yatreda's dedication to documenting history – both the cultural and inherited familial stories through blockchain documentation – has not gone unnoticed by art historians and modern technological figureheads.

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Vitalik Buterin noted in a 2022 TIME Magazine interview that NFTs have the potential to "fund artists that would otherwise not be able to get funded, like Yatreda in Ethiopia," as a way to empower people "who tend to not really get empowered by more centralized ways of doing things."

Artist Sam Spratt beautifully wrote about Yatreda as a contributor to On NFTs, the first major art historical survey text published by Taschen. "In this nascent NFT world crowded with empty art and outright scams, Yatreda stands out like a beacon of hope for those early bright-eyed Ethereum developers who sought to change the world. Yatreda, which began in their humble front yard in Addis Ababa, has become one of the most powerful and pure expressions of digital fine art in our space."

Yatreda and their work have become inseparable from the technology on which they have built their creative legacy upon. They embrace this element of storytelling and ideological operations through their continued use of blockchain technology. We think they're just getting started.

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It was essential to us to document the collective discourse from collectors, friends, and fellow artists as well as institutional publications that provided additional support and history to the acquisition of Abyssinian Queen. Not only was it important to capture articles from cultural, institutional publishers like Artnet, Wallpaper Magazine, Artsy, the TMA, and more, but also those who have been alongside Yatreda for their digital art journey.

While it's extremely important and notable to capture an event considered "novel for a major museum," it's also extremely heartening to see Roger Dickerman's own take on contextualizing Abyssinian Queen, and strong support from the likes of Deca Art founder Bonafidehan, Sam Spratt and cultural commentators like 787 and Benny "Red Beard." Don't worry - we archived all of these too.

https://x.com/RogerDickerman/status/1858848204311126407

We know that the acquisition of Abyssinian Queen did not happen in one day, one year, or even in one lifetime. Yatreda's work is the culmination of thousands of years of history, generational storytelling, perseverance, collective joy, power, and creativity that has come together for this singular moment. The TMA's embrace of digital artwork comes in a swell of tens of thousands of art lovers developing a relationship with Yatreda's work; from Strong Hair (2022) to Movement of the Ancestors (2021), we recognize that Abyssinian Queen stands alone spectacularly as a documentation of the experience of Tadele and her sister, as well as a revelation to the hundreds of patrons in the digital art world.

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You can learn more about Abyssinian Queen's lore on its Atomic Lore page here.

None of this would have happened without the incredible work of Yatreda ያጥሬዳ, and their relentless pursuit of redefining contemporary art globally. A huge thank you to the Toledo Museum of Art for trusting us with this onchain archival project.