Freya Tewelde Eritrean, b. 1977

Overview

Freya Tewelde is a London-based interdisciplinary artist whose psychospiritual practice is rooted in painting and abstraction. She explores memory, ritual, and transformation through layered mark-making and ancestral inquiry, working primarily with powder pigment, oil sticks, and expansive colour fields that develop through accumulation, interruption, and return.

Born in Asmara, Eritrea and raised in Saudi Arabia, Tewelde draws on her diasporic experience, ancestral heritage, and background in the social sciences to examine the emotional and spiritual dimensions of identity and healing.

Tewelde's deeply spiritual paintings draw from her Eritrean heritage and meditative practice, approaching each work as a perceptual enquiry. Works typically begin on the floor, where gravity, movement, and orientation shape the canvas as a spatial site of encounter rather than a framed image. Drawings, sketches, and sensory notes often act as early anchors, but the work is resolved through sustained engagement with surface, gesture, and chromatic balance. This process ensures her mark-making remains intuitive, allowing each painting to develop through accumulation, interruption, and return.

Exhibitions

Freya Tewelde - Geometry of Elsewhere
London 5 Jun - 25 Jul 2026
As part of the official programme for London Gallery Weekend, Gallery 1957, London is proud to present Geometry of Elsewhere , a solo exhibition of new works by Freya Tewelde. Opening on 5th June, the exhibition marks a new direction in Tewelde’s practice, bringing together a series of abstract paintings...
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Biography

Her work weaves together archival imagery, cosmic symbolism, and intuitive gestures to create spaces that are both intimate and expansive. She is currently developing new bodies of work that explore threshold states—moments of suspension between emergence and dissolution—alongside ecological memory, cultural symbolism, and spiritual autonomy.

Recent exhibitions include What the Mountain Has Seen at Exhibition Research Lab, Liverpool (2025), Small Is Beautiful at Flowers Gallery, London (2024), and Journey to the Unknown at the Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London (2024). International exhibitions include Rituals at The Room Contemporary Art Space, Venice (2019), SHIM at Miami Art Week (2022), and The Great Islander, Taipei, (2019).

Later this year, Tewelde will present her first solo exhibition at our London gallery, to coincide with London Gallery Weekend, in June. This presentation continues her exploration of painting as an environment rather than an image, inviting visitors to move through and dwell within her meditative compositions.

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