Yatreda
Presented at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 this December, the digital & physical artwork Twenty-First Century Akodama is a collaboration between Asprey Studio and Yatreda ያጥሬዳ, a family-based collective from Ethiopia.
Blending heritage and innovation, the work is offered as a digital artwork by Yatreda and a handcrafted silver sculpture by Asprey Studio.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AKODAMA
On the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, Asprey Studio and the Ethiopian artist collective Yatreda resurrect and reimagine a Akodama – a traditional male crown that, in Ethiopia’s highlands, used to be a mark of nobility worn by chieftains and warriors.
Forged from silver and draped with cascading chains, it symbolised strength and divine favour. Today, its traces endure in fragments: one known example in the British Museum, among the few that remain, and others seen in historic paintings and early photographs from the turn of the century.
As a symbol of status lost to time, Twenty-First Century Akodama (2025) stands as proof of the enduring Ethiopian heritage and imagination.
The artwork, living in both the digital and physical form, plays homage between tradition and innovation.
Yatreda
Yatreda ያጥሬዳ is a family-based collective of artists from Ethiopia, led by creative director Kiya Tadele, who create digital artwork in the style of tizita — a profound sense of nostalgia and longing for the past. Combining childhood musings, oral history, and folk tales with the rich history and legends cherished by modern Ethiopians, Yatreda’s work invites viewers to contemplate the cyclical nature of history.
In a fusion of tradition and innovation, Yatreda mints their artwork on the blockchain, employing a 21st-century approach to preserving history. This peer-to-peer, shared online record of transactions enables them to immortalize African legends, folk dances, and endangered cultural styles for eternity, reflecting their mission to rediscover Africa’s original self once again. Their art bridges the ancient and the contemporary, ensuring that Ethiopia’s cultural legacy is both celebrated today and safeguarded into the future.
Yatreda has collaborated with a number of galleries and institutions, such as LACMA in Los Angeles, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, USA, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, and won the Prix Ars Electronica 2022.
Picture: Kiya Tadele, Creative Director of Yatreda, working on the first sketch for Twenty-First Century Akodama, 2025
