Mihret Kebede

Walk sans Frontieres

Ethiopian artist Mihret Kebede would have liked to walk the 5850 miles from her home in Addis Ababa to our town of Huntly, Aberdeenshire. However the physical difficulties of navigating through the deserts, let alone the closed borders and visa restrictions make such a feat almost impossible. So Mihret needs our help. In order for her to accumulate the 5850 miles from Addis to Huntly she needs a total of 225 people to walk a marathon of 26 miles - each way. Can you help her?

To achieve this goal, Mihret has organised a Slow Marathon around Huntly on 17th March. A parallel walking event will take place in Addis Ababa the next day to bring her back home.

To link the participants of the two walking marathons in Huntly and Addis, Mihret wants to exchange their shoe laces.

“For me shoe laces symbolise people's identity as they carry the history of one’s daily activities. By exchanging our shoe laces we create a tie between all walkers in spirit - even though the distance and other travel barriers and visa restrictions would otherwise make it impossible."

Multi-world record holder Haile Gebrselassie will participate in the Slow Marathon in Addis Ababa with his shoelaces being exchange with one of the Huntly participants. Who will be the lucky one to receive his laces?

Sign Up for the full marathon and submit your shoe laces:

• by dropping off your old laces at the Empty Shop, Bogie Street or sending them to Deveron Arts
• by adding £3 to your registration fee and we will purchase a pair of laces for you and send them to Ethiopia.

Mihret is Director of Netsa Art Village, Ethiopia, a platform for young artists to network and share experiences. For the past three years she has organised and contributed towards workshops, exhibitions and poetry recitals. Mihret’s paintings and installations have been exhibited in Africa and America. She is well known in particular for her radical work in which she utilizes her own menstruation blood for her ongoing diary.

INSTEP exhibition in collaboration with Norma Hunter at Limousine Bull, Aberdeen. Feb 2012

Solo Exhibition with Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin: Feb-March 2012