Elias Sime explores the interconnection of technology, society, and nature through precise assemblages of utilitarian materials, from electric wires to circuit boards to computer keys. 

Through the use of recycled materials, the artist considers how devices originally designed to connect individuals ultimately mediate the flow of information and impede interpersonal interaction, while generating immense amounts of electronic waste. These legacy technologies are imbued with new vitality in the hands of Sime, who dissects moribund electronic devices and methodically transforms them into arresting visual displays that reference their social and physical histories. 

Within his ongoing Tightrope series (2009–present), which recognizes the precarious balance between technological advancement and its environmental impact, Sime initiated a body of works titled ECHO!? that features defunct megaphones attached to the surface. This funnel-shaped object, suspended from the top right corner of the composition reflects the artist’s continued consideration of the ways information is communicated and subsequently understood or misunderstood, while questioning whose voice is amplified. To make the work the artist disassembled keyboards and attached individual keys to panels in various patterns and at differing heights, creating an intricate assemblage that appears to pulsate. This mosaic of monochromatic keys, each with their own symbol, plays with patterns of communication across time, while examining the role of technology in how ideas spread and reverberate. 

About the artist: Elias Sime (b. 1968, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) graduated from the School of Fine Arts and Design at Addis Ababa University with a degree in graphic art in 1990. With collaborator Meskerem Assegued, Sime cofounded the Zoma Museum in Addis Ababa, an environmentally conscious international art center, which opened in 2019. The same year, Sime received the Smithsonian’s African Art Award. 

Sime’s work has been included in important group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Studio Museum, Harlem, NY, and in several exhibitions around the world, such as the 59th Venice Biennale (2022); the New Crowned Hope Festival, Vienna, Austria (2006); and the Dak’Art Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal (2004). In 2019, the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, organized the artist’s first major museum survey, which traveled to the Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO, and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada. Sime’s work is represented in numerous museum collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO; Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa; and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Sime lives and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.