photo Courtesy Of RJ Steele ’23
On Saturday, Sept. 7, the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art’s featured exhibit for the fall semester “Elias Sime: Tightrope,” opened. The exhibit features Sime’s work from the past decade and a selection of earlier works. The Wellin is the first museum to showcase a major survey of Sime’s art.
Elias Sime is an Ethiopian multidisciplinary artist whose work extends to painting, performance, architecture, and sculpture, employing both natural and man-made materials. His art explores how he can repurpose these materials and fuse their opposing concepts into one.
The Wellin Museum first worked with Sime in 2017, when the museum acquired one of his pieces for its permanent collection and put it on display. The piece was immediately popular and well-received amongst museum goers. Additionally, Johnson-Pote Director and “Tightrope” curator Tracy L. Adler worked with Sime over several years and says she admired his work for some time.
Adler thought that an exhibition of Sime’s work would be a good fit for the Wellin Museum because of the art’s accessibility, its relevance to pressing contemporary issues of sustainability, and its educational potential.
“Elias’s work has numerous access points, and for a teaching museum like the Wellin, this affords different disciplines to interact with the work,” said Adler. “We’ve already had classes in a range of subjects engage with the show.”
The entirety of the Wellin staff, in addition to some faculty and administration members, worked with Sime to put on “Tightrope.” As part of the process, Adler also traveled to Sime’s studio and the Zoma Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which Sime co-founded with anthropologist, curator, and writer Meskerem Assegued.
“Tightrope” features more than twenty-five works that vary in size and holistically reflect Sime’s artistry.
“All the works are all made from repurposed computer and electrical components,” said Adler. “But the artist is quick to say it’s not about recycling but rather using non-traditional materials and having an appreciation for the latent beauty of functional objects. It does, however, point to the difficulties — or the tightrope — technology presents. It has made the world smaller and information and communication more fluid, but [it has] also mediated our lived experiences.”
A monograph will also accompany the exhibit. Adler said that this will be “the first monograph devoted to Sime’s work,” and it will feature “contributions by Tracy L. Adler; Meskerem Assegued, Curator and Co-Director, Zoma Museum, Addis Ababa; Dr. Karen E. Milbourne, Senior Curator, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.”
In addition to the “Tightrope” exhibit, Sime collaborated with Hamilton students to create a sculpture over the summer. The sculpture, Flowers & Roots, was inspired by the Saunders Peonies, which former professor Arthur Percy Saunders developed at Hamilton College in the mid-twentieth century. Flowers & Roots currently resides on the Wellin Museum’s Selch Terrace and was funded through the Daniel W. Dietrich ’64 Fund for Innovation in the Arts.
The students who participated in the project were Safa Ahmed ’21, Alexander Fergusson ’20, Olivia Fuller ’19, Elias Griffin ’20, Anika Huq ’19, Lila Reid ’20, and Henry Andrew Watson ’19.
Ahmed says she was inspired to join the project after hearing about it from her advisor, Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh. Fergusson has worked at the Wellin Museum since he was a first-year, and says when he was looking to continue work there over the summer, the museum invited him to be part of the project.
Ahmed and Fergusson had shared and unique roles during the creation process. Both students helped spread HyperTufa over the structure, while Fergusson also cut and glued computer chips, and Ahmed shaped and cut wood and steel mesh to make petal structures.
Ahmed says she loved the positive and fun work environment and thought it was amazing to work with Sime; she said one of her favorite parts of the project was when people sang and danced to music during work.
“[Sime] is such a passionate and talented artist, and he was always willing to help and teach us,” said Ahmed. “He was very hands-on with his sculpture and tried to make sure we got a very good grasp on how to handle the HyperTufa.”
Fergusson found that this exploration of his visually artistic side was both his biggest challenge and favorite part of the project.
“Most of my artistic thought gets channeled into performative arts (music and improv comedy) and so beginning to delve into the visual side of things was a really fun thing,” he said. “Also the people I worked with, both students and Wellin staff (as well as Elias, of course) were a delight. The construction of a sculpture uses a lot of hand work, allowing for lots of chatting.”
There will be numerous “Tightrope”-related events happening on campus in the near future. On Wednesday, Oct. 2, in the Wellin Museum, Dr. Karen E. Milbourne will deliver a lecture at 4:30 PM about her contribution to the Elias Sime monograph and her work in contemporary African art. On Monday, Nov. 4, at 5:00 PM, Tracy Adler will lead a tour of the exhibit. Adler noted that “Tightrope” has already had “classes from Africana studies, art, art history, environmental studies, ESOL, French, Hispanic studies, literature, creative writing, and psychology [sign] on to work with the show.” She also mentioned that there will be community-oriented programs based around the exhibit.
“Tightrope” closes on Dec. 8. Afterwards, it will 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.
“It’s exciting to have a show generated by the Wellin to travel so widely, expose new audiences to his work, and to introduce scholarship about Elias’s work,” said Adler. “I also hope that audiences visit the show and just connect with the work and enjoy themselves.
“The [Wellin] museum is free, so visitors can come for five minutes or stay all day.”
