Recent Work
- Recent Work
artwork, Tariku Shiferaw
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King Kunta, Kendrick Lamar) 2016
92 x 40 x 17 in
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ARTIST STATEMENT
My ongoing body of work titled, One of These Black Boys, explores mark-making through painting, addressing issues around space-making within societal structures. Every piece is titled using Hip-Hop, R&B, Blues, Jazz, Reggae, and Afrobeats. In appropriating songs created by the African Diaspora as painting titles, the work automatically inherits the references, identities, and history portrayed through the lyrics, while simultaneously referencing Western abstraction.
In my new series, Mata Semay (Amharic for "night skies"), I use mythology to address the concept of mark-making and erasure as a way to engage social constructs. Roland Barthes described mythology as a 'phenomenon of mass culture', a semiological system which can transcend factual systems. Mythology is an invisible force that shapes our imaginations and interpretations of our reality. Mata Semay is composed of imagined night skies and constellations using various symbols relating to the African Diasporic cultures as well as Western contemporary culture. This series is composed of paintings, ceramic sculptures, and sound. The sound component consists of the hum of ancestral prayers, protest and war chants, juxtaposed with other abstracted sounds such as city trains departing, gunshots, and waterfall—all distorted and intermixed with one another. [End Page 90]
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King Kunta, (Kendrick Lamar) installation 2016
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Fetty Wrap, (Trap Queen) 2021
92 x 40 x 17 in
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Fetty Wrap, (Trap Queen) (detial) 2021
92 x 40 x 17 in
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Waiting in Vain, (Bob Marley) 2021
33 x 30 x 3.25 x size in
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Am I Blue, (Dinah Washington) 2017
70 x 54 in
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A Sign in Space 2023
A site responsive piece that was exhibited at Galerie Lelong & Co. New York September 7–October 29th, 2023
dimensions variable
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Dogon (Sun) 2023
90 x 96 x 16 in
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Faram Gami I Faram (Mulatu Astatke) 2023
60 x 48 in
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Forgive Them Father, (Ms Lauren Hill) 2020
79 x 35 x 16 in
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tariku shiferaw Tariku Shiferaw is a New York based artist who explores mark-making addressing the physical and metaphysical spaces of painting and social structures. Recent exhibitions include Men of Change, a four-year nationally traveling exhibition with the Smithsonian Institution (2019-2023), and Unbound, at the Zuckerman Museum of Art (2020-2021). Other group shows include the 2017 Whitney Biennial, as part of Occupy Museums; A Poet*hical Wager, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2017); and What's Love Got to Do With It?, at The Drawing Center (2019). Notable solo exhibitions include Erase Me, at Addis Fine Art, London (2017); This Ain't Safe, at Cathouse Proper, Brooklyn (2018); and It's a love thang, it's a joy thang, at Galerie Lelong, NY (2021). Shiferaw participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (2018–2019) and Open Sessions at The Drawing Center (2018–2020). He is currently an artist-in-residence at the World Trade Center through Silver Art Projects (2020–2022).
