Elias Sime at Art Basel Unlimited

For Art Basel Unlimited, James Cohan will represent one of the earliest works from Elias Sime's Tightrope series, Tightrope 4 (2009-2013). The artist’s focus on electronic materials began in 2009, out of a long career working with assemblage art and architectural installations in his home country of Ethiopia. The compositions connect Sime’s research into ancient Ethiopian carving, weaving, and building rituals to a long lineage of oral history and vernacular techniques through contemporary, mass-produced objects. 

 

Tightrope 4 was a cornerstone work in the very first exhibition of Sime’s Tightrope series— curated in 2013 by Meskerem Assegued and shown in Addis Ababa — heralding the artist’s singular adeptness at handling the technological material that has become his signature.