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 is as interested in a stripped motherboard from a mobile phone as he is an animal skull or worn-out button and takes interest in the way that objects and ideas can connect in new ways. In the past decade he has sought to better understand the cultural and historic underpinnings of those instincts, traveling through rural villages in Ethiopia to research ancient rituals still in practice. Sime collects histories and vernacular techniques as much as objects.

His work has been shown internationally at 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.

Links to Editorials:

In Sprawling Panels, Ethiopian Artist Elias Sime Recycles the First World’s Circuit Boards

Artsy Editors Oct 1, 2015