Yatreda

Named after a childhood nickname, Yatreda is the family art collective celebrating Ethiopian history in the NFT world.

“My name is Kiya Tadele. I was born in the Ethiopian countryside but I always saw a different life for myself. I moved to our capital city, Addis Ababa, to join the modeling industry for 7 years. After that, I wanted to learn behind the camera. I worked in production all over Ethiopia, in the lighting and editing department of other photographers and documentarians. All of those things taught me a lot, but Yatreda is the first project that I have ever taken full leadership of. I modeled in some of the NFTs myself, casted others, organized the productions, and photographed them. It is scary but exciting at the same time.

The word Yatreda (ያጥሬዳ) comes from a source of two Amharic words: fence (አጥር) and debt (ዕዳ ). When I was little, my mom took me to a vision-impaired woman. She felt my face with her hands to see how I looked like. She said my face was beautiful and when I grow up boys will climb and break our fence to look at me. Therefore, our house fence will have a struggle, break, and be in debt. So that was my nickname as a little girl. We decided this name was also perfect for our art project because we photograph and film everything in our front yard. Neighbors and the construction workers building houses around us wanted to know what we were doing, wanting to know who these people in historical costumes were walking around our house. As they were curious looking at us from over our fence, Yatreda became the name for our group.”