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Artists

AD–WO (Emanuel Admassu and Jen Wood)

Emanuel Admassu: He // Him // His
Jen Wood: She // Her // Hers

Architects and Artists

New York, New York

Two people stand side by side, facing us directly. Emanuel is a Black man with a shaved head and a neatly-trimmed beard wearing a navy corduroy shirt. Jen is a white woman with light-brown hair wearing a long-sleeved black dress with a large white circle on the front.

Photo by Rachel Hulin.

“Our work is committed to unlearning the conventions of architecture with hopes of developing a spatial practice that is open and generous.”

AD—WO is an art and architecture practice based in New York City, and by extension, between Naarm/Melbourne and Addis Ababa. The practice examines how space is imaged and valued through art, design, and curatorial interventions. Founded in 2015 by Jen Wood and Emanuel Admassu, AD—WO has exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2023), La Biennale di Venezia (2023), Art Omi (2023), Harvard GSD (2023), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2021), the Architekturmuseum der TU München (2018), and the Studio Museum in Harlem (2017). They are the exhibition designers for Dear Mazie at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU (2024); the exhibition designers and curatorial consultants of SIGHTLINES on Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa (2023) at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York; and design architects of Bole Rwanda (2024), a multifamily housing project that is currently under construction in Addis Ababa. AD—WO’s work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta).

Donor -This award was generously supported by Anonymous.

This artist page was last updated on: 03.04.2025

Architecture & Design
A large installation shot of a long, narrow hallway in an industrial interior. On the left hangs a textile composed of abstract shapes and patterns of black, green, red, and gray. The wall on the right is covered with a blue tarp and protruding bamboo sticks. On this wall an arched entryway leads into a dim gallery space where a large tapestry hangs, depicting a dark-blue pyramid and floating black orb on a background of blues and grays.

Installation view of Ghebbi by AD—WO, 2023. La Biennale di Venezia.

Photo by Claudia Rossini.

A wall of dark display cases divided into vertically-oriented rectangular sections. Each section displays warm metallic objects that resemble jewelry, figurines, or vessels. On the wall behind the objects is a mural depicting a figure wistfully standing behind a tree with red bark and blue leaves. The background of the mural is a moody black backdrop with constellations of white circles and webbing lines.

Gallery view of SIGHTLINES: Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa by AD—WO, 2023. Bard Graduate Center, New York.

Photo by Da Ping Luo.

A detail of a miniature cityscape on a circular tabletop. The miniature is colored in grayscale and appears, at first glance, to be rows of buildings covered in snow and punctuated by trees and powerlines. Upon closer inspection, the rows of snow-covered buildings are actually bricks with an assortment of objects placed on top such as figurines, cars, trucks, train tracks, and stacks of wood.

Detail of ATL Bricks by AD—WO, 2022. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Photo by Naho Kubota.