Elias Sime Ethiopian, b. 1968
Elias Sime (b.1968 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) deftly weaves, layers and assembles carefully selected everyday materials, transforming commonplace items into lyrical abstract compositions that suggest topography, figuration, and color fields. He often creates intricate works from electronic components—including circuit boards, computer keys, and telecommunications wires. For Sime, the history of these materials hold meaning and their significance emerges after thorough consideration. They suggest the tenuousness of our interconnected world, alluding to the frictions between tradition and progress, human contact and social networks, nature and the man-made, and physical presence and the virtual.
Sime’s work achieves effects from dense narrative to austere modernist abstraction. He is as interested in a stripped motherboard from a mobile phone as he is an animal skull or worn-out button: the artist looks past the emotional weighting of new versus old, instead finding renewal everywhere, and taking greatest interest in the way that objects and ideas can connect in new ways.
Elias Sime (b. 1968, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is a world-renowned artist known for his use of industrial materials, such as microchips, power cords, and tech components. His first solo exhibition, Elias Sime: Tightrope (2020-2021), was showcased at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, and traveled to the Akron Art Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum.
Beyond his artwork, Sime, in collaboration with Meskerem Assegued, co-founded and designed the Zoma Museum in Addis Ababa, an environmentally conscious art center that opened in 2019. The museum integrates art with sustainable architecture and includes galleries, a library, school, and public spaces. They are also developing Zoma Village on Entot mountain, transforming a steep hill in Addis Ababa into terraced gardens and a diverse artistic community. Recent exhibitions include Eregata (2023) at Arnolfini, Bristol, which traveled to Hastings Contemporary (2024), Currents 118: Elias Sime at the Saint Louis Art Museum (2020), and Elias Sime: Tightrope at the Wellin Museum (2019). His permanent installation Roots is displayed at Johns Hopkins University.
Sime’s Elias Sime: Dichotomy ፊት እና ጀርባ (2024) was an official Collateral Event at the 60th Venice Biennale, and is now part of Echo at Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, running through June 2025. His work has been featured in numerous biennales and group exhibitions at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the 59th Venice Biennale, and the Royal Academy of Arts, among others.
Sime’s work is held in prominent collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Pérez Art Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, Cleveland Clinic Art Collection and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, among others.