The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art held its fourth annual African Art Awards on Friday, Oct. 25. Recognizing “the best in contemporary African art,” the event honored the achievements of Elias Sime, the artist currently featured at the Wellin Museum of Art.
The College’s presentation of
Elias Sime: Tightrope
in early September marked the artist’s first major museum tour. For more than 25 years, the artist has made collage and sculptural assemblages from found objects such as stripped motherboards from mobile phones, discarded computer hardware, thread, buttons, plastic, animal skins, and organic building materials such as mud and straw. He carefully weaves, layers, and assembles these found materials into abstract compositions suggestive of aerial landscapes and color field painting. Sime looks past the emotional weighting of new versus old and instead finds renewal everywhere, taking great interest in the way that objects and ideas can connect in new ways.
Speaking on living and working with technology, Sime commented “Before, when I traveled to parts of the world, I saw people — lovers, friends — kissing or touching. A lot of physical presence. Now I don’t see that. They’re all engaged in the machine, not with one another. When you don’t talk while looking eye to eye, how do you know one another? Or have a conversation? My work reclaims these machines in a tender way, as I am not in opposition to technology. It’s about how to balance it with “real” life. We’ve become off-balance. My title for my series of collages,
Tightrope
, has a double meaning. It’s about this equilibrium, but I also wanted it to evoke a string: if you pull it too tight, it will break.”
As an extension of his artistic process, Sime is involved in the exploration of vernacular architecture. Working with curator and anthropologist Meskerem Assegued, Sime co-founded, designed, and built the award-winning Zoma Museum in Addis Ababa, an environmentally conscious international art center with facilities that include a gallery space, library, children’s center, edible garden, elementary school, and art school.
The center makes it a priority to involve the local community in art projects and teaching. This includes working with street children on mural painting projects and art programs for HIV-positive children. “[Sime and Assegued] are truly at the forefront of contemporary art and contemporary happenings in Addis” said Zoma Wallace, a curator with the District of Columbia Arts Center. “With every project, idea, workshop, exhibit, they are constantly pulling in the local artists and making sure they are considered for opportunities that come to Addis so that they can have exposure to processes that they might have not yet have got to in their careers.”
The National Museum of African Art featured a monumental installation of Sime’s work in the museum’s entry hall, which was celebrated at the African Art Awards event. After its tour at the Wellin, the
Tightrope
exhibition will subsequently travel to the Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.
Gus Casley-Hayford, director of the National Museum of African Art, sought to recognize Sime’s work, along with the work of fellow artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby, because both artists explore the interconnectivity of our world. At the heart of the museum’s mission is the desire to engage visitors in the aesthetic achievements of historic and contemporary African artists. “Both [Sime and Crosby] focus on the personal and societal impact of connection as they work with materials evocative of contemporary renewal, reuse, and hybridity,” said Casley-Hayford. “We are delighted to have works by these extraordinary artists on view while our museum undergoes its own process of physical renewal, and also as we share our future plans to connect more with our global audience.”
