Congratulations to Elias Sime on the opening of Currents 118: Elias Sime on view from July 31 through January 31 at the Currents 118 Art Museum in St. Louis. The exhibition is curated by Hannah Klemm, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, with Molly Moog, Research Assistant.
Currents 118: Elias Sime showcases twelve new and recent works, including two new freestanding sculptures. The colorful, domed sculptures were inspired by Sime's visit to Currents 118 and the Cahokia Mounds in present-day Illinois. Sime's works reference both Western art history and traditional Ethiopian textiles and architecture, created using local, Ethiopian techniques for weaving wire. Rather than seeing the discarded objects he collects as recycled items, Sime is interested in how they are reclaimed and given new life in art. By transforming the discarded into the extraordinary, Sime allows us to see things in new ways.
Ethiopian artist Elias Sime (b. 1968, Addis Ababa) brings together repurposed materials such as computer keyboards, motherboards, and electrical wires to create the complex, often colorful tableaus. Sime sources his supplies from the Merkato in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the largest open-air market in Africa, sometimes waiting years to accumulate a significant amount of an item. He breaks, weaves, collages, and burns these materials before affixing them to modular panels that are put together into large assemblages. From a distance, these works resemble abstracted paintings, suggesting images of landscapes, outlines of figures, or aerial views of imagined cities. Sime's intricately woven and densely layered works draw upon their materiality to comment on ecological sustainability, the resilience of nature, social responsibility, and the beauty of the utilitarian.
In 2019, the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College organized Elias Sime: Tightrope, curated by the Wellin's Johnson-Pote Director Tracy L. Adler, marking the artist's first major museum survey. The next leg of Elias Sime: Tightrope opens on August 4th at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City. The exhibition is accompanied by the first monograph focusing on the work of Elias Sime, copublished by the Wellin Museum of Art and DelMonico Books • Prestel, and is available for purchase on our website. Sime received an African Art Award in 2019 from the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and is shortlisted for the 2020 Hugo Boss Prize.

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