Johanna Tesfaye received her MA from the School of the Art Institute, where she created various
short film experiments and began developing a transdisciplinary creative process. Her
filmmaking focuses on cultural memory, black & afro-diasporic histories, and personal
archives, a practice informed by her academic and professional background in
communication design, performance studies, and psychotherapy.
 

Pondering Ritual (2021), Johanna’s debut short film on care practices and black femme
community, screened in Marseille. Her second short, The Keeper (2024), was produced
and screened in Prague. The project combines artifacts of the filmmaker’s familial
archive with the history of African students in Soviet Europe.

Johanna’s independent research on the relationship between memory, performance,
and the archives has been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,
Indiana University Cinema, Chicago Cultural Center, The School of the Art Institute,
Washington College, and the National Communication Association Convention.