Sleeping beauty (shuka), 2024

Leikun Nahusenay  

Leikun Nahusenay (b. 1982) is a multidisciplinary visual artist who currently resides and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Despite being self-taught in painting, he graduated from the Ale School of Fine Arts (2006) and Teferi Mekonnen School of Art (2011). Leikun is a member of Netsa Art village and affiliated with NasGedame Studio.
The artist creates paintings, photographs, collages, sculptures, prints, and textile works. His art practice is about memory, spirituality, and physical presence as well as transformation of material, surface, and time through rich imagery and experimental techniques. Leikun uses double exposure superimposition collage and scratch and peel collage to create ghostly fusions of the real and imagined worlds in his photographic work.
The artist has exhibited his work in various local and international galleries and museums. These include Threads of Life in Fragments of Time at the Art Basel Miami Beach, 2025–26; Fondation Blachère (France, 2019); Salon Zürcher Art Fair, New York, 2017; Asni Gallery, Addis Ababa, 2016; and Addis Fine Art, 2016. He has also been featured in the 1:54 contemporary art fair, London (2019); Dos Mares, Marseille (France, 2018); Addis Fine Art (2016); and Asni Gallery (2015). Besides his art practice, Leikun participates in photography fairs such as the Bamako Encounters Photography Biennale (Mali) and Picha Biennale (Lubumbashi, Congo, 2010).
Moreover, Leikun teaches art to children with special needs on a yearly basis.