Chicagoans waiting for their buses to arrive may have noticed stirring images of face-painted women with piercing stares in colorful settings populating city bus shelters — a departure from the typical cologne or energy drink advertisement.

Through May 21st, commuters all over Chicago can casually take in the work of artist Aïda Muluneh, an esteemed photographer whose pieces currently hang in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. The citywide installation, called “This is where I am,” is put on by the Public Art Fund and appears in New York, Boston and Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as Chicago.

The artist understands that most Americans are probably not familiar with Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, nor are they well versed in Ethiopian history. However, you don’t need to be an expert in African studies or art to be curious about Muluneh’s bright multi-layered images.

WBEZ’s Julia Binswanger reached Muluneh at her home in Côte d’Ivoire to learn more about the eye-catching and mysterious women gazing at Chicagoans all over the city. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

What inspires her art

Muluneh: People ask me, “Where do I get my inspiration from?” and a lot of it stems from my photo journalistic background, but also just my own personal stories. Every frame is a depiction of my journey.

Normally, the titles of my work are inspired by poems, because it pieces everything together for me. For this, the basis is a poem by Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin. This became the motivation to have discourse as it relates to challenges and conflict, not only in my country, but when we look at Africa and the global conflict that we see. When you read the poem, it’s about the sense of helplessness. You want to take action and you want to make a contribution. But sometimes you’re stifled in trying to figure out where you stand on things, and this has been my motivation as it relates to this body of work.

Why she’s a strong believer in public art

I’m a very big fan of public installations. I don’t believe in the elitism of art that has to be contained within gallery spaces. As artists sometimes we have to come to the realization of, “Who are we making the art for?” I have great collections that I showcase in galleries and art fairs. But at the same time, it’s important to educate and engage the general public that might not necessarily go to gallery shows or that might not go to museums.

Children responding to art is the most fascinating thing for an artist because they’re not over-intellectualizing it. It’s not this art critic or curator with whatever sophistication trying to explain the work, but it’s a pure sensibility and a pure approach to the work. All I’m looking for is just to inspire that one single person that will stop and look at it and be provoked to realize, “Wow, what is this?”

Diving into symbolism

The color is the seduction part. I draw you in with the color, but within each work there’s a lot of symbolism. For you, as a foreigner, when you look at the image, you might only get one sense of it. But for my people when they see the work, they’ll see the different layers. The jebena for example, which is a traditional coffee pot, is really an integral part of our society [Editor’s note: It is pictured in a few of her portraits]. As the birthplace of coffee in the world, Ethiopia has a very special link to that. It’s more than a drink. For us, it’s a moment of coming together. It’s a moment of having conversation.

Why the women in her portraits have painted faces

I started doing the face painting to bring traditional elements into the contemporary. Initially, the inspiration came from the southern region of the Omo Valley where they use face painting as a form of self expression. Doing research across Africa and South America, I started noticing that body painting, tattooing, scarification intersect at some interesting points. So, the face painting has different symbolism. In it there’s different moments, different colors. It all comes back to the masks that we wear for different reasons.

When you look at cultures in the Middle East and in some parts of Africa, this symbol of the eye means many things. When I’m painting the faces, it’s not about painting the whole eye. It’s about leaving enough open. They can still see the skin behind it, because again it’s supposed to mimic a mask. When I make a selection of the models, the eyes are the first things that I look at. It’s pretty intense how the model is gazing back. So it’s more than an audience looking at the work, but it’s about that piece looking back at the audience.

Sparking curiosity in Ethiopian and African art

My primary goal is to be able to have a universal conversation, but at the same time, a very specific conversation as it relates to Ethiopia. Having worked as a photojournalist for quite some time, one of our key roles is to be able to document stories that might be unknown, or stories that are not in the forefront of the media. And, often for me, the main thing has been, “How do we put a reference to moments of time and our own histories?” That has been my goal from the beginning, especially when we’re having a conversation about representation, identity and the shifting dynamics of Africa.

I would encourage people to visit our website, africafotofair.com. There are a lot of artists pushing the envelope as it relates to different regions in the continent. People from Chicago should know that there’s such a rich culture in Africa. I’m just one person. The whole point of engaging in these spaces is to open the audience up to exploring. We are in the generation of information where everything is accessible. It’s not like back in the day where you’re sending slides to a gallery for them to just look at your work through the postal system.

Now, everybody’s connected. And what I’m trying to encourage is for people to look beyond just one artist, but to really look into what is happening in the continent.

To find a map of Muluneh’s work in Chicago, click here.

Julia Binswanger is a WBEZ audio producer and curator. Follow her @juliabinswanger.