Ethiopia rises: surge in cultural interest is boosting the case for return of looted artefacts, says Sissay

An Ethiopian cultural surge - including a first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the rise of stars such as Ruth Negga and The Weeknd - is making the country's calls for restitution of looted colonial-era artefacts harder to ignore, according to the author Lemn Sissay.

- Lanre Bakare 

Sissay, a former chancellor of the University of Manchester and official poet of the London Olympics in 2012, is curating Ethiopia's inaugural Biennale pavilion.

He said the event, where works by Tesfaye Urgessa will be on show, would be part of a significant cultural push from the east African country and its diaspora over the past two decades.

Sissay, whose mother came to the UK from Ethiopia in 1966, said the emergence of Ethiopians such as the Booker-nominated author Maaza Mengiste, the fashion model Liya Kebede, Mulatu Astatke - the musician and arranger who is considered the father of "Ethio-jazz" - and visual artists including the photographer Aïda Muluneh and the abstract landscape painter Julie Mehretu was forming a critical mass that was forcing museums and governments to reassess looted Ethiopian items in their collections.

Those include items taken after the Battle of Magdala, fought between British and Abyssinian forces in 1868.

Sissay said: "As Ethiopia articulates itself through culture around the world, it becomes less easy to ignore the Battle of Magdala.