
ELIAS SIME
TIGHTROPE: (4) While Observing..., 2018
Reclaimed electrical wires and components on panel
63 x 54 5/8 in.
JCG9795
ELIAS SIME
TIGHTROPE: (2) While Observing..., 2018
Reclaimed electrical wires and components on panel
54 3/8 x 47 3/8 in.
JCG9802
ELIAS SIME
TIGHTROPE: (7) While Observing..., 2018
Reclaimed electrical wires and components on panel
72 3/8 x 63 in.
JCG9793
ELIAS SIME
TIGHTROPE: (29) While Observing..., 2018
Reclaimed electrical wires and components on panel
72 3/8 x 78 5/8 in.
JCG9787
ELIAS SIME
TIGHTROPE: (8) While Observing..., 2018
Reclaimed electrical wires and components on panel
86 3/4 x 46 5/8 in.
JCG9796
ELIAS SIME
TIGHTROPE: (11) While Observing..., 2018
Reclaimed electrical wires and components on panel
108 5/8 x 78 5/8 in.
JCG9792
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Out of the Blue
2017
Reclaimed electrical wires on panel
81 3/8 x 141 5/8 in.
206.7 x 359.7 cm
JCG9123
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Out of the Blue (detail)
2017
Reclaimed electrical wires on panel
81 3/8 x 141 5/8 in.
206.7 x 359.7 cm
JCG9123
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Against the Wave
2017
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
82 1/2 x 159 in.
209.6 x 403.9 cm
JCG9098
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Symbolism and Confusion
2017
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
63 3/8 x 157 3/8 in.
161 x 400 cm
JCG9101
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Internalized
2017
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
63 3/8 x 94 3/8 inches
161 x 240 cm
JCG9102
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Evolution (1)
2017
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
110 x 166 1/4 in.
279.4 x 422.3 cm
JCG9107
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Evolution 2
2017
Reclaimed electrical wires on panel
91 x 94 inches
162.8 x 320 cm
JCG9023
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Narcissism
2017
Reclaimed electrical wires on panel
64 x 95 inches
162.6 x 241.3 cm
JCG9022
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Behind the Beauty
2017
Reclaimed electronic components on panels
91 1/4 x 127 1/4 inches
231.8 x 323.2 cm
JCG9192
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: The Dominant
2017
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
81 3/8 x 126 inches
207 x 320 cm
JCG9097
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Impulsive Juggernaut of Progress
2017
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
64 1/2 x 63 1/2 in.
163.8 x 161.3 cm
JCG9120
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Surface and Shadow 2
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
108 5/8 x 204 5/8 in.
275.9 x 519.7 cm
JCG9773
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Surface and Shadow 2 (detail)
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
108 5/8 x 204 5/8 in.
275.9 x 519.7 cm
JCG9773
ELIAS SIME
Tighrope, Zooming In
2012
Reclaimed electronic compnents on panel
83 1/2 x 313 in.
212.1 x 795 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Zooming In (detail)
2012
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
83 1/2 x 313 in.
212.1 x 795 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Surface and Shadow 1
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
46 x 79 1/2 in.
116.8 x 201.9 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Familiar Yet Complex 6
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
55 1/4 x 79 1/2 in.
140.3 x 201.9 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Familiar Yet Complex 1
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
46 x 79 1/2 in.
116.8 x 201.9 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Familiar Yet Complex 7
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
55 x 87 1/2 in.
139.7 x 222.3 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Familiar Yet Complex 2
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
83 x 87 1/2 in.
210.8 x 222.3 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Familiar Yet Complex 2 (detail)
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
83 x 87 1/2 in.
210.8 x 222.3 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Familiar Yet Complex 3, 2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
81 3/8 x 126 in.
206.7 x 320 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope, Familiar Yet Complex 3 (detail)
2016
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
81 3/8 x 126 in.
206.7 x 320 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 7
2009-14
Reclaimed electronic components, mixed media and wire on panel
110 1/2 x 361 in.
280.7 x 216.9 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 7 (detail)
2009-14
Reclaimed electronic components, mixed media and wire on panel
110 1/2 x 361 in.
280.7 x 216.9 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Infatuation
JCG8501
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 3
2009-14
Reclaimed electronic components and fiberglass on panel
5 3/4 x 16 feet
175.26 x 487.68 cm
JCG7833
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 5.1
2009-14
Reclaimed electronical wires on panel
130 1/4 x 93 1/4 in.
330.8 x 236.85 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 5.1 (detail)
2009-14
Reclaimed electronical wires on panel
130 1/4 x 93 1/4 in.
330.8 x 236.85 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 9
2009-14
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
63 x 236 1/2 in.
160 x 600.7 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 9, 2009-14 (detail)
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
63 x 236 1/2 in.
160 x 600.7 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope: Myopia 2
2015
Reclaimed electronic components on panel
63 1/2 x 48 1/4 in.
161.3 x 122.6 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope Mobile
2009-14
Reclaimed electronical wires on panel
108 x 128 in.
274.3 x 325.1 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope Mobile (detail)
2009-14
Reclaimed electronical wires on panel
108 x 128 in.
274.3 x 325.1 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 6.A
2009-14
Reclaimed electrical wires on panel
75 1/2 x 133 in.
191.8 x 337.8 cm
ELIAS SIME
Tightrope 6.A (detail)
2009-14
Reclaimed electrical wires on panel
75 1/2 x 133 in.
191.8 x 337.8 cm
ELIAS SIME
Ants & Ceramicists 10
2009-14
Yarn stitch and found objects on canvas
61 x 33 x 2 in.
154.9 x 83.8 x 5.1 cm
ELIAS SIME
Ants & Ceramicists 10 (detail)
2009-14
Yarn stitch and found objects on canvas
61 x 33 x 2 in.
154.9 x 83.8 x 5.1 cm
ELIAS SIME
What is Love? 13
2007
Yarn stitch on canvas
37 3/4 x 29 1/4 x 1 in.
95.9 x 74.3 x 2.5 cm
ELIAS SIME
What is Love? 13 (detail)
2007
Yarn stitch on canvas
37 3/4 x 29 1/4 x 1 in.
95.9 x 74.3 x 2.5 cm
Zoma, Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Zoma, Addis Ababa Ethiopia
ELIAS SIME
Elias Sime (b.1968 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in relief sculpture and architecture. For more than twenty-five years, the artist has made collage and sculptural assemblage from found objects such as thread, buttons, plastic, animal skins, horn, fabric and bottle tops, alongside organic building materials and binding agents such as mud and straw. Many of the objects come from Mercato, the Addis Ababa open-air market said to be the largest in Africa, and in particular the market’s Menalesh Tera section—literally “what do you have?”—where trash is repurposed in resourceful ways and its new potential is shared among the community.
Sime’s work achieves effects from dense narrative to austere modernist abstraction. The artist resists the collagist’s shorthand of using discarded objects as traces or poetic stand-ins for human feelings or individual lives, favoring instead the idea of what Frieze writer Quinn Latimer has called “the feverish fusion of a multivalent society.” Sime is as interested in a stripped motherboard from a mobile phone as he is an animal skull or worn-out button: the artist looks past the emotional weighting of new versus old, instead finding renewal everywhere, and taking greatest interest in the way that objects and ideas can connect in new ways.
Sime has a masterful handling of material, with fluency and pure formal instincts a hallmark of his practice. In the past decade he has sought to better understand the cultural and historic underpinnings of those instincts, traveling with the anthropologist Meskerem Assegued through rural villages in Ethiopia to research ancient rituals still in practice. Sime collects histories and vernacular techniques as much as objects.
Holland Cotter of The New York Times writes, “Sime’s work, while culturally specific, has always been universalist. And although never without critical thrust — no one knows better the horrors visited on Africa by shipments of toxic Western e-waste — it is utopian.”
Elias Sime (b. 1968, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is a prominent name both in Africa and internationally. With the full cooperation of curator and anthropologist Meskerem Assegued, Sime founded and designed the Zoma Contemporary Art Center in Addis Ababa, an international art center described by the New York Times in 2009 as “a voluptuous dream, a swirl of ancient technique and ecstatic imagination.” His work has been shown internationally at the Dak’Art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal; the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, Austria; and in the United States at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and a survey exhibition that traveled from the Santa Monica Museum of Art, California, to the North Dakota Museum of Art. Sime designed various costumes, props and set-pieces for Peter Sellars’ production of Stravinsky’s opera Oedipus Rex, performed at the Sydney Opera House as well as in Los Angeles, Aix-en-Provence and London. An upcoming performance of the opera will be staged in Stockholm.
Elias Sime’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Toledo Museum of Art, OH; Perez Museum of Art, Miami; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; North Dakota Museum of Art; Newark Museum, NJ; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, NH; Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; and the Carl and Marilyn Thoma Foundation, Chicago, IL.