North Dakota Museum of Art ETHIOPIAN ARTIST ELIAS SIME AT THE NORTH DAKOTA MUSEUM OF ART MARCH 27 – MAY 31, 2012 PUBLIC OPENING TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 6 – 8 PM Sime will speak about his work Co-curators Meskerem Assegued and Peter Sellars will be present and will participate in the informal gallery talk at the opening. “Eye of the Needle: Eye of the Heart” is a large retrospective survey that covers twenty years of one of Ethiopia’s most original and prolific contemporary artists, Elias Sime. Included are over 100 works made from such things as yarn stitches, tattered fabric, buttons, stuffed goat skins, discarded plastic shoes, animal horns, and bottle tops collected from the streets and sprawling markets of Addis Ababa. Sime transforms them into collages and stitched canvases, into floor and wall sculpture, and into installations. According to Peter Clothier of the Huffington Post, “Community is an essential part of his work: family and friends join with him in the creation of his art, and he spreads small wealth and creativity amongst the local children by rewarding them for bringing him the results of their scavenging. He is, in a real and pragmatic sense, a social activist.”
Elias Sime, Portrait, 2007. Clothes and yarn on canvas, 29 x 20 inches. Photo Santa Monica Museum of Art.
MAY 3, 5 PM — READING FROM NIGHT SHADOW, a 2009 play by Amoussa Koriko just published in France by Harmattan and presented in conjunction with Elias Sime’s exhibition. The animated reading will feature a professional woman dancer, a drummer, and two actor-readers. According to this UND French language instructor from Togo in West Africa, “As a playwright and director, I wanted to explore through this reading Africa’s cultural heritage as a background for the unfolding of the story in a play that deals with the complexity of war in Africa.” Koriko founded the Grand Forks African Arts Arena to share African arts and culture through presentations in schools and in the community.
Elias Sime, Monkeys, Frogs and Television, 2006. Mud and straw, Dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the Santa Monica Museum of Art
Near Left: Amoussa Koriko Far Right: Elias Sime March 2012