Through his multi-disciplinary artistic practice, Tariku Shiferaw engages with the history of painting, particularly geometric abstraction, using rectilinear bars and gestural brushstrokes. His work explores how Black identity is represented, obscured, and interpreted within contemporary culture, using layered compositions and a restrained palette to examine systems of visibility and concealment. Shiferaw organizes his paintings into two interconnected bodies of work, Mark Making and Mata Semay (Amharic for “night sky”), through which he investigates African history, identity, and modes of recognition using gesture, music, repetition, and symbolism. Relating to the intentionality of his mark-making the artist has said, “A mark, as physical and present as cave-markings… reveals the thinker behind the gesture—an evidence of prior markings of ideas and self onto the space.” This presentation presents several paintings that highlight Shiferaw’s evolving exploration of abstraction as both a formal and conceptual form of expression. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Shiferaw grew up in Los Angeles, and currently based in New York City.
Sponsors
Pamela Joyner and Fred Giuffrida
