Elias Sime: Tightrope by Tracy L. Adler (review)

Gracing the expansive Dietrich Exhibition Gallery at the Wellin Museum of Art (Figs. 1–2), the exhibition Elias Sime: Tightrope presented twenty-eight large-scale wall-mounted compositions, many of them between 10 and 21 feet wide, as well as two three-dimensional installation works. A film produced for the exhibition included commentary by the artist and footage about his work and process. The film also documented Elias Sime’s association with the Zoma Contemporary Art Center and its successor, the Zoma Museum (dedicated in 2019) in Addis Ababa, an art project in its own right. Sime co-founded the Zoma Museum with Meskerem Assegued, an anthropologist, contemporary art curator, and Sime’s frequent collaborator.

Elias Sime was born in 1968 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he continues to live and work. In 1990, he graduated with a degree in graphic art from the Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design, but began to make art according to his own vision soon thereafter. In the intervening years, Sime has become an internationally known multidisciplinary artist noted for his originality and independence, as well as his focus on contemporary themes.

Sime’s accomplishments were honored in October 2019 with the 4th annual African Art Award from the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art, which recognizes “the best in contemporary African art” (NMAfA 2019). Sime has also been named one of six finalists for the 2020 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s Hugo Boss Prize, which honors outstanding achievement in contemporary art.

Although Sime’s work has been included in nearly twenty solo exhibitions and many group shows, the Wellin Museum was the organizer of his first major touring exhibition. It traveled to the Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio, and will also be exhibited at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.

1.

Entrance to the exhibition Elias Sime: Tightrope at the Wellin Museum of Art with Tightrope: Surface and Shadow 2 in the foreground.

Photo: John Bentham; courtesy of the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College

2.

Installation view of the exhibition Elias Sime: Tightrope at the Wellin Museum of Art. Photo: John Bentham; courtesy of the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College

The exhibition included objects from 2003 through 2019. Sime’s earlier work was represented by six canvases with imagery stitched with multicolored thread. Three of these, dated 2009–2014, were from a series called Ants and Ceramicists, in which both linear elements and seemingly solid areas of color were created with hundreds of stitched ant forms suggesting tunnel networks and dense nesting colonies (Fig. 3). The idea behind this series is that ants, typically viewed as an annoyance, are nevertheless highly adaptable social animals that have survived for millennia. With the title Ants and Ceramicists, Sime compares ants with Ethiopian potters, who are often of low status and impoverished (Assegued 2013), in part because their livelihood has been threatened by readily available cooking and serving vessels in metal, enamelware, imported porcelain, and plastic. Sime admires the communal labor practices that have helped local ceramicists to survive as craftspeople who continue to provide for the household needs of the common people.

3.

Elias Sime

Ants & Ceramicists 11 (2009–2014)

Thread on canvas; 186.4 cm × 131.1 cm × 5.7 cm

Collection of Erica Tennenbaum and Alex Friedman, New York

Photo: Adam Reich Photography; © Elias Sime

4.

Elias Sime.

Tightrope: The Dominant (2017)

Reclaimed insulated wire on panel; 206.7 cm × 320 cm

Collection of Erica Tennenbaum and Alex Friedman, New York

Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle; © Elias Sime

5.

Elias Sime

Tightrope: Silent 2 (2019)

Reclaimed electronic components on panel; 184 cm × 320 cm

Courtesy of the artist...