Elias Sime: Tightrope

A first-ever monograph featuring the work of the Ethiopian artist Elias Sime, who brilliantly explores the impact of life in a post-consumerist world. Sime’s brightly-coloured sculptural tableaus feature found objects including thread, buttons, electrical wires, and computer detritus. This book highlights the artist’s work from the last decade, much of which comprises the series entitled Tightrope. Repurposing salvaged electronic components, such as circuits and keyboards, Sime incorporates the refuse that are the byproducts of technological advancement, and points to the urgency of sustainability. The resulting abstractions reference landscape and the figure as well as traditional Ethiopian textiles. Tightrope refers to the precarious balance between the progress technology has made possible and its detrimental impact on the environment. AUTHOR: Tracy L. Adler is the Johnson-Pote Director of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. Her previous books include Jeffrey Gibson: This Is the Day, Julia Jacquette: Unrequited and Acts of Play, and Yun-Fei Ji: The Intimate Universe (all by Prestel). SELLING POINT: .
Elias Sime is an Ethiopian-born multi-disciplinary artist who works primarily in relief sculpture and architecture. For more than twenty-five years, he has made collage and sculptural assemblages from found objects such as thread, buttons, bottle caps, electrical wires, and computer circuits and keyboards. 100 illustrations