In ‘Colonial Ruptures,’ Artist Sharif Bey Defies the Constraints of Time through Fragmented Figures



“The Oviary I,” earthenware, combined media. All photos © Sharif Bey, shared with permission.

Artist Sharif Bey facilities his observe round recontextualizing, a course of he undertakes by fracturing long-held views by way of fragments. His figurative sculptures unify disparate supplies and broad cultural references throughout generations and eras—his works are notably undated—drawing on each the aesthetics of West-Central Africa, significantly the religious protectors referred to as nkisi, and the commercial histories of his household and present metropolis of Syracuse.

Largely crafted round bits of his personal ceramic vessels, Bey’s works are on view at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum in a solo exhibition titled Colonial Ruptures, which questions the inherent worth and energy of objects, significantly as they’re stripped from their unique cultures by way of colonial violence and structural racism. Bowed nails and rusted spikes evoke the artist’s familial ties to boiler making, a career the present’s curator Sequoia Miller connects to the constraints of labor for Black males within the Nineteen Sixties: “It was one of many few ways in which African American households may transfer into the center class. [Bey is] enthusiastic about his connection this entire lineage of labor, of manufacturing, of middle-class identification, and linking it to African American identification, [to] entry to African cultural assets.”

Bey pairs these corroded metals with bits of shattered pottery and a reconstructed medley of his earlier sculptures, which he’s damaged and repositioned into new figures. His expressive, earthenware faces usually characteristic a crack by way of an eye fixed or cheek, whereas aura-like rings of discovered scraps encircle their glorified varieties. Every bit is deeply rooted in its unique contexts and but open-ended within the questions it suggests, a pairing the artist expands on in an announcement in regards to the exhibition:

I’m impressed by folklore, purposeful pottery, modernism, pure historical past, and a lifelong affinity for West African and Oceanic sculpture. My works examine the symbolic and formal properties of archetypal motifs, questioning how the meanings of icons, objects, and capabilities remodel throughout cultures and over time.

Along with Colonial Ruptures, which is on view by way of August 28, a broad survey of Bey’s works can be up by way of August 14 on the Everson Museum. You’ll find extra of his sculptures on his site and Instagram.

“Boilermaker,” earthenware, combined media.

“Uplifted Faces,” earthenware, combined media.

“Yardagain,” earthenware, combined media.

“Captains Wheel,” earthenware, combined media.

“Lion Chook Collection: Alpha,” earthenware, combined media.

“Choir Singer,” earthenware, combined media.

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