Let’s go to the roots. I’ve read that you started painting in your childhood. Do you remember the moment when you understood that you are an artist and would like to devote your life to it?
Actually, I didn’t start painting until the end of my junior year in high school, in Los Angeles. However, I’ve always doodled, then moved on to still-life and portraiture drawings with pencil, charcoal, colored-pencils, then moved on to soft-pastels and oil-pastels before moving into oil and acrylic paintings. It was after attending a summer art program for high school students at California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA) held at Cal Arts that I decided I’d pursue art in college and professionally.
© Tariku Shiferaw, Longing for Motherland, 2024, Courtesy the Artist.
You were born in Ethiopia, grew up in Los Angeles, then moved to New York. They always say that cultural identity shapes the subject matter of art – how does your background influence the art narrative you are telling?
You know, for a long time my paintings were visually and conceptually influenced by the many artists I had admired throughout my formal art education – artists I was exposed to, such as Dalí, Magritte, Picasso, Kahlo, Cézanne, Matisse, Duchamp, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Martin, Baldessari, Frankenthaler, Richter, and so many other European and American mid-century artists. I mean, these are all amazing artists whose works I still admire. However, as I matured in my practice, I began to critically question my formal education in art and found a language of my own to express both my admiration and frustration of Western art history. My series, “One of These Black Boys” was birthed out of such frustration – to find a place for someone that looked like me amidst Western art history. It wasn’t until after I got out of school that I discovered artists such as Whitten, Thomas, Clark, and many others. So, “One of These Black boys” became a way to illegitimately mark oneself into the canon – using horizontal bars as a form of redaction to the familiar art historical painterly gestures in the background of my paintings. Additionally, I titled every work using song titles by musicians of the Black diaspora as a conceptual layer to making a mark.
It really isn’t until my latest series, “Mata Semay” that I began tapping deeper into my African cultural identity – this, of course, is very complex to unravel. I was born in Ethiopia, but raised in the U.S. So, my cultural identification is split in two and I understand the world through both backgrounds. As an Ethiopian, I admire and respect the history that precedes me, but as an American I have a first-hand experience that there’s no place in the world that will see me before they see my skin color. So, the series “Mata Semay” (Amharic for night skies) is a depiction of an imagined night sky, fusing abstraction that re-engages ancient and contemporary African diasporic knowledge with sound and image-making practices. Combining painting, sound, and sculpture, I propose alternative mythologies to imagine how the night sky would exist if diasporic cultural contributions were considered in the global consciousness.
© Tariku Shiferaw, Trap Queen (Fetty Wap), 2021, Courtesy the Artist.
Let’s go to the creation process. When you start working, do you already have a clear understanding of the concept of the show or how the finished work should look like or is it usually born in the process of work? Do you work with sketches or go direct to the canvas?
That’s a great question. I leave space for a little bit of both. I plan a show and give myself enough time for experimentations and failures. For paintings, I sometimes do a lot of study pieces – especially when the painting is extremely large. Other times, I just get into it – but I do mess up quite a bit and so I end up having to re-paint some paintings, like, four times over. For installation or sculptural works, I sketch out the idea using both paper drawings and computer 3-D models. I always leave space for experimentations in creating installations, but most of the visual placement and dimensions have to be figured out early in the process.
I found it curious that in one of your interviews you named René Magritte and Salvador Dalí among your favorite artists. To what extent (if any) your works are influenced by surrealism and why do you find it fascinating?
Yes, I loved and was inspired by both artists in the early parts of my practice. The surrealist art movement often placed objects or figures into spaces where it didn’t quite belong – or augmented objects and figures, where it’s partially recognizable and left the rest for the imagination. André Breton’s Surrealist manifesto describes how this movement tapped into the subconscious, and for me, Dalí and Magritte hit it harder than any artist in that particular art-movement.
So, my works between 2006 – 2013 were really inspired by the surrealist movement. This period was a transitional place between figuration and abstraction in my practice.
© Tariku Shiferaw, Fell in Luv (Playboi Carti), 2021, Courtesy the Artist.
You obviously prefer abstract forms & geometric abstraction specifically. Have you ever considered trying figurative art? Will you ever go in this direction?
I think the boundary between abstraction and figuration is fairly thin. I understand figuration is interchangeably used to describe representational work, which also includes landscape art. I believe a painting can simultaneously be both abstract and representational. The moment someone reads my blues as a sky or a body of water, it can be read as a representational work. Or if you were to see my ongoing “Flags of Us” series (a variation of the American flag paintings in black and blue) or my “Africa Paintings” series (obscured flags of nations with large Black population), then the boundaries between abstraction and representational works continues to blur. While I don’t see my practice heading towards figuration, which I assume in your definition refers to portraitures and bodies, I believe my work will continue as it always has – making abstract and semi-representational works through painting and installation art.
The idea of the sky seems to be central for you, running through your entire oeuvre. Could you tell us please how did you discover this motif and why does it have such a significant meaning?
For the most part, it’s because I love the color blue, aesthetically – and the sky happens to be blue. But it’s also because the sky represented freedom for me – freedom from living in the everyday life filled with systemic boundaries. I mean, social boundaries are great (by ways of establishing public safety), but it can also be suppressing - living in that 9-5 with not enough money to survive, it becomes a rat-race. So, the sky is always symbolically a place of escape, wondering, dreaming, imagining, coping, and envisioning. Over the years, I’ve seen beautiful sky scenes in so many paintings that have subconsciously inspired me. I mean, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel skies, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Turner’s sky paintings, Guston’s blue backgrounds (with a little burnt umber mixed in it), and Magritte’s surrealist blue skies with fluffy clouds, were all very inspiring in some ways. Additionally, the Los Angeles blue skies against the palm trees is something I didn’t realize I miss so much until I moved to New York.
© Tariku Shiferaw, Stolen Stars Awaiting To Return, 2024, installation view at "Midsommar", BODE, Berlin, 2024. Image: Luca Gargano
Speaking about geometric abstraction, you mentioned once that geometric shapes can carry numerous meanings, depending on the cultural context they’re placed within. What ideas you want them to transmit in your art practice?
Geometric shapes do carry a history of different meanings throughout time. These shapes have been used by all sorts of people dating back to cave-paintings. My point is that each geometric shape carries multiple meanings depending on it’s contextual use (i.e. circles and triangles used in modern traffic signals don’t have the same meaning as when they’re used in scientific, religious, or cultural context). In my practice, such forms carry their history, while they’re also redefined to contextually engage my concepts around making a mark within the discourse of Painting. Triangles, X’s, dots, and squares have contemporary context, but can also refer to groups of people that have used these symbols as a language form – such as the Dogon symbols or the Aboriginal patterns.
© Tariku Shiferaw, Cosmic Egg, 2023, Courtesy the Artist.
Your body of work One of These Black Boys consists of paintings, sculptures, and installation. Looking at your artistic path, one notices that you’ve always been fond of volumes and three-dimensional forms. Could you explain why?
Yes. Both “One of These Black Boys” and “Mata Semay” series consist of painting, sculpture, and installation art. My installation work engages space in a different way than my paintings do. The space of painting, although limited to mostly two-dimensions, accomplishes so much in carrying my concept of making a mark within the context of artmaking, culture, and politics. The space of installation-art allows the work to be experienced differently – it’s immersive and can be entered into physically. The act of making an installation work in itself allows me to use physical space as a medium to make a different type of “mark” than I could in painting – here, mark-making takes place through sound, sculpture, paintings, and human bodies (a person who walks into the installation space temporarily becomes a part of the work for the moment).
Blue and black appear in many of your works. That’s a curious color combination, since black is often tabooed in society, being related to death, while blue is revered as the symbol of hope and the heavens. Why did you decide to combine these antagonistic colors or what is the connotation of it?
At first, it was the aesthetic juxtaposition for me. In 2014, when I painted using a variety of colors, I noticed a very small moment in my paintings where the juxtaposition of black and blue was so beautiful that I dedicated a lot of time to explore those two colors. Equally important, I love the cultural, poetical, and political references it introduces to my work. The relationship between the two colors engages symbolic meanings and references. Similar to geometric shapes, colors have various meanings depending on cultural and geographical backgrounds. Black is dark and evil to some, yet Black is power to others. Blue is sad to some, yet it’s serene to others. I like that I can use these two colors to engage subjects I’m interested in – such as the day-blue-sky and the black-night-sky or the Black body that has bruised in combination of these two colors throughout various Western history – especially the big-brother blue police uniform enforcing the boundaries of a system against Black bodies.
© Tariku Shiferaw, Stolen Stars Waiting to Return, 2024, Courtesy the Artist.
In recent selection of your works, you use chiffon. Are you going to continue experiments with textile?
Yes, I used poly-chiffon, mylar, iridescent film, various types of silk, canvas, and acrylic paint. I have been using textile, wood, and other found objects for a very long time. However, my September 2023 solo exhibition at Galerie Lelong in New York was the first time I’ve publicly shown my textile works. I plan to show a lot more in the future.
Where else, except for art, do you draw inspiration from? What hobbies, activities or personalities are your key inspiration sources?
I draw inspiration from everywhere: regular everyday life, the sidewalk, patterns, textures, materials, billboards, art, books (especially science fiction ideas), conversations, YouTube, music, travel, politics, and lived experiences – it’s the subtle moments that I find interesting in all of these things and I try to remake such moments and magnify them as I did with the black and blue in my paintings.
© Tariku Shiferaw, A Boy is a Gun (Tyler, the Creator), 2020, Courtesy the Artist.
Could you please give us a quick glance into the future. What are you currently working on and what extraordinary project you would like to bring into life?
I’m currently experimenting with colors, paint-application, and materials. I experiment year-round till I get something right – something that feels good. I am working on two things at the moment: 1) I’ve been attempting to add brown (specifically burnt umber) in my blue backgrounds within the “One of These Black Boys” series – after three years of experiments, I’ve finally gotten it right earlier this year. So, I’ll be making more blue backgrounds with subtle touch of browns. 2) I have been pushing the “Mata Semay” series, both in painting and installation. I’ve been working on a new installation work that is slightly different from my previous installations. As for the “extraordinary projects” I would like to bring to life, I have had an incredible idea of making a “One of These Black Boys” series installation piece that would cover an entire room with blue walls and place numerous matte-black wooden-sculptural-objects (resembling shipping pallets) on every inch of the wall-space. Then use lighting to cast shadows and include a sound piece that would emanate out of the wall sculptures. Lastly, leave the middle floor-space completely empty. I imagine this work would be similar, in aesthetics, to the sculptural wall-piece titled, “A Boy Is A Gun (Tyler, the Creator),” that I exhibited at Zuckerman Museum of Art in January 2020. I’ve been dreaming about this unrealized project since 2019 and I hope to accomplish it one day.
Interview conducted by Valentina Plotnikova
