Urban life can be a tricky, even precarious, walk across a tightrope, referred to in “Tightrope: Behind the Processor #2,” the title of this work by Elias Sime.
Recently acquired by NOMA, this work’s tapestry of intertwined wires and circuit boards suggests the topography of fractured, sprawling cities.
Such aerial positionality allows us to zoom out from the minutiae of repurposed electronic waste — in this case, gathered in Addis Ababa’s Merkato (open-air market) but shipped from Western countries — to consider its global impact in an accelerated consumer culture.
Here, renowned Ethiopian artist Elias Sime repurposes e-waste of the type shipped from abroad for “processing” in African countries — especially the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia.
While residents of Western countries may consider this recycling, the cost is steep to humans and the environment.
Pointing to this contradiction, Sime weaves a narrative of everyday objects that speaks louder than words about, as Sime puts it, the “troubled relationship between countries that create tremendous e-waste and those that process it.”
Looking past the emotional weighting of new vs. old, he instead emphasizes the way that objects and ideas can connect in poignant ways.
“Tightrope: Behind the Processor #2” is on view now in Afropolitan: Contemporary African Arts at NOMA, which highlights some of the most pioneering African artists of the 20th and 21st centuries from NOMA’s permanent collection.
In this series, Lagniappe presents works from the collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, with commentary from a curator.
