“I was struck by somebody who felt so strongly about his art that he was willing to create something that would get him potentially killed.” The artist Eric Gottesman is telling me about the Ethiopian novel Oromay, which was published in Amharic by author Baalu Girma in 1983, was banned five days later and ultimately got its author killed. “That dedication of an artist to speak truth to power was humbling, awe-inspiring, confusing – it made me ask, why do we do these things as artists?”

Selections from Gottesman’s Oromaye Project – in which the artist uses Oromay as a template for creative photographic work – are on display at Fotografiska in New York through 22 October in the show Listen Until You Hear, co-curated by Michelle Woo and Jun Mabachi of the artist collective For Freedoms, and Amanda Hajjar and Meredith Breech of Fotografiska New York. The multimedia show, which encourages audiences to develop their skills for “radical listening”, includes a banned books annex featuring books that have been prohibited in American schools since 2021.

When Gottesman was first exploring the idea of a banned books reading room, he was “shocked” to realize that school districts just an hour or two away from New York City had banned books like Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, Jazz Jennings’s Being Jazz, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved. “This isn’t just a thing that we hear about in the news, it’s very present and close,” he said.

Gottesman quickly realized that the subject of banned books was the perfect way to entwine the work he has done around Oromay with concerns relevant to audiences in the US. “One of the parts of my work with Oromay is about reading that book in public spaces in Ethiopia. I didn’t think a public reading of that book was relevant, but I did think reading banned books was a very relevant conversation.”

Oromay emerged after the takeover of Ethiopia, when Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974 by the communist Derg regime, which instituted a government based on terror and repression. Girma, the author of Oromay, was originally a well-respected Ethiopian journalist who had published five previous books, although he would go on to become the chief propagandist of the Derg regime. Over time, Girma became disenchanted with the Derg’s leadership.. “By day he would serve as the government’s chief propagandist, but by night he wrote out this novel, which was about the chief of propaganda in this regime very much like the Derg regime,” said Gottesman. “It had characters that represented everyone in the regime, and criticisms of propaganda machine and government.”

Upon publication, Oromay was almost immediately suppressed, but it continued to circulate via Xerox copies. In spite of the government’s efforts to eliminate it, the book became well-known and was read, so much so that it got its author into trouble: Girma eventually disappeared, probably because of the book he had taken such pains to write and publish. “He left and never came back – nobody knows what happened to him, but it’s believed he was killed,” said Gottesman. “Many years later, after the Derg regime fell, Oromay quickly became the most popular novel in Ethiopia.”

Despite the vast differences between 1980s Ethiopia and contemporary America, Gottesman sees similarities behind the Derg’s efforts to ban Oromay and contemporary American book bans. “A lot of these books are being banned in order to rewrite history, to make claims about who should be allowed to exist publicly in our society and whose stories should be whitewashed. It’s about not having to face that history.”

If book bans are indeed about erasure, then there is currently a lot of it happening. According to data compiled by the American Library Association, book bans are currently at record levels in the US. The organization documented 1,269 “demands to censor library books and resources” in 2022, by far the highest in the 20 years the ALA has monitored book banning. Concerningly, 90% of these demands were efforts to ban multiple books, an enormous escalation over 2021. This comes on top of efforts by Republican politicians such as Ron DeSantis, who has stripped Florida public schools of books with themes involving LGBTQ+ individuals or subjects like racism.

In addition to construing book bans as efforts toward erasure, Gottesman also positioned them as a cynical effort by conservative politicians to rile up their base for elections. “It’s a naked attempt to build a political coalition around ideas that feel uncomfortable; they tried with critical race theory, any now they’re trying with LGBT stories.”

Regardless of whether book bans are efforts at erasure or bad-faith efforts by cynical politicians, their harm is real, hitting some of society’s most vulnerable members. Gottesman pointed out that book bans have the impact of telling LGBTQ+ kids and kids of color that they’re unworthy of being represented, which ultimately sends the message they aren’t wanted and can’t be free. “That to me is a disaster. To witness the effects of the demonization of friends is infuriating. It is hateful and mean.”

For Gottesman, the power of reading a story that reflects your particular experience is extraordinarily important, and should not be taken away from any children, particularly those belonging to marginalized groups. His first experience as a high school student with Toni Morrison’s widely banned Beloved was transformational. “There’s a liberation that happens when books that reflect the everyday lived experiences of people that aren’t widely represented in media or books. There’s a liberation that readers can experience by recognizing themselves. When those books are banned, it’s an attempt to limit how free readers can be.”

In part, the banned books reading room is about showing those communities that they do matter. It’s also about making space for uncomfortable ideas. This is Gottesman’s hope for his Oromaye Project, the Listen Until You Hear exhibition, and its banned books annex. “As an artist, the idea of suppressing creative expression is so anathema to me. My job is to create a healthy tension with notions of comfort. Discomfort and complexity is how we grow.”

• Listen Until You Hear is on display at Fotografiska in New York until 22 October