In “Colonial Ruptures”, artist Sharif Bey defies the constraints of time through fragmented figures



Art

#ceramics #nails #sculpture #Sharif Bey

Artist Sharif Bey centers his practice around recontextualization, a process he undertakes by fracturing long-held perspectives through fragments. His figurative sculptures unify disparate materials and broad cultural references across generations and eras – his works are notably undated – drawing inspiration from both West Central African aesthetics, particularly known spiritual protectors under the name of nkisiand the industrial histories of his family and the present-day city of Syracuse.

Made largely around pieces of his own ceramic vessels, Bey’s works are on display at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum in a solo exhibition titled Colonial breaks, which questions the inherent value and power of objects, especially as they are stripped of their native cultures by colonial violence and structural racism. The bent fingernails and rusty tips evoke the artist’s family ties to boilermaking, a profession that exhibit curator Sequoia Miller links to the limits of black men’s work in the 1960s: “It was the one of the few ways in which African-American families could settle into the middle class. [Bey is] thinking about its connection to this whole lineage of work, production, middle class identity, and relating it to African American identity, [to] access to African cultural resources.

Bey associates these corroded metals with bits of broken pottery and a reconstructed mix of his earlier sculptures, which he has shattered and repositioned into new figures. Her expressive terracotta faces often feature a crack in an eye or cheek, while rings of aura-like found pieces encircle their glorified forms. Each piece is deeply rooted in its original contexts and yet open in the questions it suggests, a couple that the artist develops in a statement about the exhibition:

I am inspired by folklore, functional pottery, modernism, natural history and a lifelong affinity for West African and Oceanian sculpture. My works investigate the symbolic and formal properties of archetypal patterns, questioning how the meanings of icons, objects and functions transform across cultures and over time.

In addition to Colonial breaks, which is on view until August 28, a large preview of Bey’s works is also in place until August 14 at the Everson Museum. You can find more of his sculptures on his site and Instagram.

Boilermaker, earthenware, mixed media.

“Raised faces”, earthenware, mixed media.

“Yardagain”, earthenware, mixed media.

“Captains Wheel”, earthenware, mixed media.

“Lion Bird Series: Alpha”, earthenware, mixed media.

“Choir singer”, earthenware, mixed media.

#ceramics #nails #sculpture #Sharif Bey

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