Tightrope, Zooming In
Artist: Elias Sime (Ethiopian, Born 1968)
Date: 2012
Dimensions:
83 1/2 × 313 in. (212.1 × 795 cm)
Medium: Reclaimed electronic components and assorted small ephemera on panel
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott
Object number: 2018.12A-JJJ
Label Text:"I don’t see my artistic materials as trash. I treat them like oil paint, acrylic or clay…. One thing that touches me about these materials is the number of people who have touched them. These people include factory workers on the assembly line, merchants, consumers, and the people who collect them at the dump."
--Elias Sime
Tightrope, Zooming In is a monumental work comprising intricate pieces of electronic waste, shipped in bulk to be recycled in various countries in Africa—a process involving the toxic burning of digital detritus. Ethiopian artist Elias Sime finds many of his materials at recycling markets in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital city, where he is based). Discarded bits of computer parts and other technologies, such as motherboards, batteries, tacks, wires, and buttons, interconnect to create a quilt-like pattern of abstract forms. These forms can be read in a variety of ways: a bird in flight, a figure on a cross, or an aerial view of his city altered by the toxic effects of e-waste. While his work is critical of this environmental and technological reality, it also has a utopian, if not unsettling, beauty.
--Elias Sime
Tightrope, Zooming In is a monumental work comprising intricate pieces of electronic waste, shipped in bulk to be recycled in various countries in Africa—a process involving the toxic burning of digital detritus. Ethiopian artist Elias Sime finds many of his materials at recycling markets in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital city, where he is based). Discarded bits of computer parts and other technologies, such as motherboards, batteries, tacks, wires, and buttons, interconnect to create a quilt-like pattern of abstract forms. These forms can be read in a variety of ways: a bird in flight, a figure on a cross, or an aerial view of his city altered by the toxic effects of e-waste. While his work is critical of this environmental and technological reality, it also has a utopian, if not unsettling, beauty.
Not on view