African artists have made quite the splash lately in the New York Times' stylish fashion and design supplement, T Magazine. Recent issues, blogged in this space, featured Samuel Fosso in Men's Fashions and fashion photography by Malick Sidibé.
The most recent issue, Design Spring 2009, includes a piece written by Susan Morgan on Ethiopian multi-media artist Elias Sime. He has exhibited recently in 'Flow' curated by Christine Kim at the Studio Museum of Harlem. Three stitched canvases by Sime are on display at the entrance to the Michael Rockefeller Wing. (To read about them, Download Annexlabels)
'Elias Sime: Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Heart,' curated by Peter Sellars and
Meskerem Assegued at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in Los Angeles, closed this last weekend. (Read Peter Clothier's review in the Huffington Post.)
And Sime was also responsible for the set design of 'Oedipus Rex' staged Peter Sellars and performed this month by the L.A. Philharmonic under Essa-Pekka Salonen. (Read the LA Times review here.)
According to last Sunday's piece, Sime has spent more than ten years assembling a home in Addis Ababa from traditional materials -- unbaked earth, thatched straw and green timber poles -- styled after round shelters known as tukuls, to which he has added his own signature assemblage. Unfortunately, the Times has not put the article, itself fashioned after the exhibition in Santa Monica, on its web site. (For those with paper copies of the Sunday Times, it appears on page 68.)
However a video link in a Christian Science Monitor review includes footage of Sime working on his building.
At right: 'Jemot,' (2003), wood, skull, horns, leather, and cowry shells. Courtesy of Bruce Morr/Santa Monica Museum of Art (photo source)
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