Icons of Displacement: Alexandra Dabbert’s Religious Art in Exile

Alexandra Dabbert, once an official court physician to Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, began her life journey in pre-revolutionary Kyiv and passed away in San Diego, California, in 2000 at the age of 101. Her remarkable life spanned the entire turbulent 20th century, mirroring mass migrations and border crossings that separated millions from their cultural and spiritual homelands. While in exile, first in Ethiopia and later in Peru, Alexandra was asked to produce liturgical icons for the religious communities of these places. Dabbert faced the artistic challenge of producing sacred art while cut off from traditional Byzantine workshops, materials, and mentorship networks. Despite having no formal training in religious art, she developed a hybrid technique that merged Byzantine traditions with locally available materials and "artisanal" methods accessible in her places of exile.

A close look at Dabbert's surviving icons reveals meticulously rendered surfaces that simulate the tessellated appearance of traditional Byzantine micromosaics, while simultaneously incorporating folk elements like handcrafted decorative borders and locally-inspired patterns around the figures. This fusion reflects not just an aesthetic choice but a practical necessity. This paper argues that Dabbert's surviving works function as visual documents of displacement, embodying the complex tensions between loss—the severing from traditional iconographic centers—and adaptation—the creative synthesis emerging from contact with new cultural communities. This case thus demonstrates how forced migration transforms artistic practice, requiring artists to reinvent sacred expression within unfamiliar contexts while ensuring their innovations remain functionally viable for their religious communities.