-Erin Dziedzic: All right,
-Tracy Adler: Hello!
-There we go.
I can't turn myself around here.
-It's nice to see how the beautiful works
there.
-It is!
All right, well, oh here we go! Hi
here we go !
Hi everyone thank you for joining us
 my name is Erin Dziedzic
I'm the director of curatorial affairs at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri.
And we are hosting the beautiful "Elias
Sime: Tightrope" exhibition.
Really really excited today to have Tracy Adler join us.
She is the Johnson-Pote Director of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum at Hamilton College in New York.
And she's going to be speaking with us,
a few questions that I had for her, about this exhibition
and just kind of some general conversations that 
she and I have been having over the past year or so
as we signed on as one of the venues for this traveling exhibition that has made its way across the country.
So there's a couple of things I wanted to cover really quickly, first if you hear a little bit of noise in the
background it's because we're in the
middle of some installation at the museum.
We have a fantastic atrium project uh going up by Joiri Minaya
that's going to be part of our atrium project in the atrium.
And then we also have a Dawoud Bey
exhibition that we'll be installing shortly at the museum.
And that will all open when the museum
finally is able to open
which we'll be announcing shortly so
stay tuned for some of those important things.
I also wanted to make mention that in addition
to this exhibition we do
have a really fantastic range of virtual
programming that you can find
on our website um at kemperart.org.
I also just wanted to make mention of
some of the sponsors for this iteration of the exhibition
here at the Kemper Museum;
our lead sponsor is the RichardJ. Stern
Foundation for the Arts Commerce Bank,
our sustaining sponsors are Steven and
Barbara Abend,
the Copenhagen Family Fund,
Norm Fretwell and Bev Haskins, and the
Morgan Thaler Family Foundation
so we thank them for their continued support.
So Tracy is joining us from her office, home office, whatever she is in New York City
and so we're so grateful to have her
here to talk a little bit about
Tightrope exhibition and I'll be sort of asking questions and also acting as camera person today
as we kind of make our way through the
exhibition and focus a little bit in detail
on some of the works that Tracy will be discussing.
So one of the exciting things about this exhibition
is that Kemper Museum had an opportunity
to be one of its hosts and in conjunction with that
I also had a really fantastic
opportunity to meet Elias Sime
and his working partner Meski
on a travel trip to Ethiopia and I know
Tracy has been working on this
exhibition for quite some time
and so one of the questions I wanted to
ask you is if you could talk to us a
little bit about
the title of the exhibition it's called
Tightrope
and it tends to be kind of an
overarching theme of the show
but not one of the only things about the
exhibition so I wanted to see if you
could lend some insight into the title of the exhibition.
-Sure, I mean typically when I'm working on an exhibition
I make up the title,
but in this case basically the last 10 years of Elias's work has been part of the Tightrope series
which actually embraces a number of different sub-groups groups of work as well
and so the whole idea of Tightrope is this is the notion
that technology has made all kinds of communication
and all kinds of things feasible but at the same time it has mediated our lived experiences.
You know people look more to their phone 
than to each other
um and also it's created this incredible
amount of e-waste
and so really thinking about both
sustainability but also this concept of
in the contemporary world we are really
walking on this tightrope this
this very fine line between progress
um and between um you know our ability
to sustain that type of progress as well.
In addition some of the the works
that were just panned to
uh we show alongside this body of work
which is
tremendous and I just made a selection
from this tremendous body
of of the Tightrope series are the this
this credit this
uh series of work that proceeded um and
overlapped at the the beginning stages
of tightrope which are these stitched
canvases
um which um also incorporate
buttons and other types of found materials.
And you know it's really kind of a
linchpin to understanding
how then Elias was you, one might argue
drawing here with
yarn and then in the Tightrope series
drawing
with electrical wire and those
electrical components which make up the
works.
And you know one of the things that I
would also say to
to visitors and to urge them to see this
work in person
is that you know you want you have one
impression of the piece from afar,
like this is a perfect example, this is from
the Ants and Ceramicists series
and then when you get up close
you see that all these stitching
are actually representing ants.
And here Elias works very closely with artisan communities and he's likening
the industriousness and the community
of ants to, in this case, ceramicists.
And there are a group of ceramic works
in the in the show as well and all of
this work really necessitates close looking.
Um even the ceramic works which are a
large display,
there goes Erin she's getting over
there.
-I'll try to go slow so I don't like...
-Right there's 200 vessels there and
you know you can see that there's
similarities and that they
all have these kind of legs and they're
all gendered
um they all have these apertures as well
pointing to the fragility of humanity
but also there's a lot of difference.
There's difference in scale there's
difference in color there's difference
in weight
um in fact when I was laying out this
piece and I was laying it out myself you
really
you could really literally feel uh the
difference in how these were composed
and Elias works with artisan communities
and
and in this case with ceramic, a ceramic
community to create
uh this this body of work and the
ceramics were actually something
that I saw during our trip to Ethiopia
um I arrived earlier than the rest of
our
uh cohort um who were there to spend
time with Elias and Meski to really get insight into his working process, spend time in his studio,
and it was in doing so that I saw these ceramic works both in studio and also at Zoma,
which is the um the museum found by Elias and Meski uh which is like a sustainable museum,
and um I asked if they could bring some of these ceramic vessels out so I could really see them
and get a sense of them and I really um I discovered them there and urged them to um to consider
us including them in the exhibition and
they were totally amenable to that.
-Fantastic I guess that actually
leads pretty nicely into my last question
in terms of uh in terms of discovery.
I wonder if you could tell us a
little bit about how this exhibition
came into existence. Maybe when
you first saw Elias's work?
When you met? When you had opportunity to meet Elias and Meski?
And what was kind of important to you as
a curator to organize this exhibition
in addition to the fantastic research trip which I really think helped other curators from other institutions
[buffering]
and feel even more connected to the exhibition?
I'm pointing at uh one of the Tightrope works right now that's actually part of the
Kemper Museum's permanent collection but we all got that opportunity to work
with you a little bit and kind of get
some insight uh
through your experience and so I'd love
to hear kind of your experience of
developing this show.
-Sure well you know my process in general,
I am the director of the museum but I also
curate a lot of exhibitions and I
come from a curatorial background and I
always spend a lot of time in artist
studios it's really important for me to
understand their process and
to situate the work in the way that
they see their work as well honor the context
of the milieu they're working and that so
to me it was really important to be able
to go there.
But, it's just stepping back a few paces um
 if you want to find the work in the show
that belongs to the Wellin, really the genesis of the show started with the acquisition of that piece.
And so I had seen Elias's work at James Cohan Gallery
and at various art fairs and
really became intrigued by the development of
this body of work, which is his mature work
over the last 10 years,
um and was kind of waiting for the
perfect piece to acquire for our collection.
-Here it is.
-There it is!
and when I saw this piece which had not
been exhibited you know I had said to
the gallery please keep me posted
as new work comes in and I just knew
that it would be
right for our collection and in the
process of acquiring the work
got to know Elias and Meski personally and
one of the things that we do at the
Wellin is really provide the opportunity
for artists who haven't had solo
exhibitions or haven't been able to explore new
terrain in their work to have these major exhibitions for the first time.
Often accompanied by a monograph as this show is and so it also seemed right to me.
Elias had had
a show of some of his earlier work that
predated this but this was really this
was the first major exhibition the first
traveling exhibition
to feature the the Tightrope Series.
And I felt like it was important work and
that's something that we we really look
to do at the Wellin is to provide
opportunities for artists that they haven't had before.
And you know in addition to working closely with Elias and Meski on developing the show,
we also have them here at the Wellin
and they created a site-specific sculpture
with the assistance of our students on our back patio so 
really they became ingrained in our community
and were really a it was very much a collaboration and again when when
I'm curating shows one of the things
that we um
that I really try and do is have it be a
collaborative experience so
all the works in the show were things
that Elias and Meski agreed should be in the show.
So there's many long conversations about what were the signature pieces that should be in the show
but they were also very flexible and I would say very open to um to things that I thought were
important to include in the show they
were
they were really a wonderful team
to to work with.
And then you know, because I wanted to go to Ethiopia and spend time with Elias and Meski
and see the context of where he works as well as visit Zoma Museum,
I urged Jim Cohan to arrange this this fabulous trip and so it was this incredible curatorial research trip
for you and me and for other um art world people
to spend time with Elias's work.
We also went to Lalibela
so we could get a sense of historically
uh where Elias's work
fits in um and it also doesn't fit in
because at the same time
his work is very contemporary it's
really about this kind of global ethos
um but it does reflect this long history
of the development of Ethiopian art too.
-Absolutely and you mentioned collaboration too as part of your practice and after having met Elias
and Meski it all kind of clicked where I
realized oh these are very collaborative
people
and it's a big part of their life and
it's a big part of their practice and
what they bring
to the arts community in Addis.
So um I wanted to know if you could
speak a little bit about like what
what that experience was like
collaborating with them in terms of
making selections of works that at the
beginning led
from the um stitched work series into
these like how did that discussion go in
terms of how you wanted to evolve the show.
-Right well I'm actually glad you're standing in front of that piece right there
because one in addition to the works
that we borrowed for the show
it was also really important for me once
they knew
everything that was going to be in the
show for them to create responsive works
ostensibly so new works could be
included in the exhibition.
And there's two pieces this is one and
then there's um there's
there's another work as well that they
made that
Elias made specifically for the
exhibition.
Is this the one? That's made up of all
the keys right?
-It is yeah this is one of them.
-And so you know um what was exciting to me...
-I'll try to get closer.
-Oh there you go, now you can really see
you can see the keys
and what again you need to see in person
and you can sort of see this as well as
the relief that that occurs
between the keys but also the work is
about
the modern history of technology
like we don't use these keyboards anymore.
You know these are from the 80s and 90s.
And if you drill down into the entirety
of the show you can really trace this history
of technology um as well but it was exciting to have them really understand the entirety of the show
and then add these additional works to create a new space to um to have dialogue around around the pieces.
But they were very flexible like I said
and really amenable to the pieces that I
felt were
important to include and you know
there's certain things that emerge in
the work like
a work like this which is very abstract
and some of his work is purely abstract
um you know like the the greenish blue one
which is like an impressionist painting
called "Behind the Beauty"
you know fully abstract and then
you know he also has work that's
evocative of landscape, and works that's evocative of the figure,
and work that recalls the cosmos,
and so, there's one of the more um
figurative works in the exhibition.
And I think it's important to know just
to give a little background about Elias himself,
he was born in 1968 in Addis and he spent his whole life there and he went to art school
and he studied graphic design and it was during the period, which was a repressive communist regime.
So he learned the soviet social realist style
and so the work like the the two heads
there and there's another figurative
work
really directly recall that both in the
kind of generalization of the figure but
the inclusion of the figure and this monumentality of the figure.
And then the landscape is a prevalent, is also prevalent in the work.
There's the one with which is
mostly black, it's called "Tightrope 3,"
which is supposed to be evocative of, there we go, of an aerial photograph of a city at night.
And I think it really does evoke that it. 
It evokes that purely through
the plastic and through the use of
um
uh of of the innards of computers
and a piece like this which is one of
the earliest
works from the Tightrope Series um
incorporates
uh technology most of which is actually
from the eastern bloc
and so like I was saying about the work
being this
history of modern technology you see it
through the show um the some of the
materials that are used there's a lot
more metals
the um even though he's using
the same type of computer there's a lot
of variation
in some of these earlier works uh
because
the soviet um computers were not as
regimented
as the ones that have been created by
the the west and he was also still
working out
his his process of utilizing uh
computer parts as well as cell phone
innards and all these different types of
technological and um electronic
components.
-And he starts with the idea first
correct I mean he starts with the idea
and then really works quite hard to
find these materials it's not
necessarily kind of a found object
process
but more of a seeking out process in
terms of finding
the particular material that's going to
serve his ideas.
-Exactly! And that's something that's
really important too, some of the
material is salvaged but some of it is
not some of it is new.
So you know there are certain works that
he searched for for years to be able to
find enough material to actually 
make, that makes the piece.
The work called "Noiseless 2," which is mostly brown
with the little flower in the bottom left,
he searched for ten years
um to find enough wire.
-I'll get a request done.
-I'm making you get your steps in
today.
-That's true, thank you I need it.
There we go.
-He searches for years to be able to find enough material to create this.
He often uses material from these cable bundles which have rainbow wire and this is a fairly rare color.
So he had the concept first and then it took him
this long to to realize it.
And the thing about Elias is he is constantly sketching.
You know we took the train together, he's sketching on the train, he didn't have anything to sketch on
so I gave him my notebook and he always, if you look in it you know he'll show you his pockets
he'll have on scrap pieces of paper you know sketches of ideas for these uh tableaus
and so he's always kind of thinking about it.
This piece I really, I particularly
love both because of the incredible variation
which again I hope you go and see it in person audience because seeing it in person both get this sense of scale
which is fairly awesome but also just
the variety within each panel in terms of the coloring.
And then you have this this flower in the left you know which is this whole idea that even in a barren landscape
you know nature finds a way and you know
Elias and Meski with both the ego museum
at Zoma but also
in their ideas are very interested um in
in supporting the preservation and
sustainability of nature
and this is a this is kind of you could
say um
a paradigm for like the whole the whole
exhibition.
This whole idea that you know nature finds a way but he's also using these technological elements you know
and I think Elias wants to engage us in dialogue. He's not saying technology is all bad, he's not saying it's all good,
he's saying this is a complex introduction
that we've introduced into society and I
want to engage
in a conversation about it and so he
does this by creating these incredible
um dazzling you know visual tableaus
so that we can start to have those
conversations both difficult and wonderful.
-Absolutely I think that's where the, I think that leads us back to kind of thinking about like why this exhibition
was called Tightrope because it really
has that kind of tension.
That idea of that idea of kind of
looking at an exhibition through time
I was um in this space
with someone who uh is a computer
programmer and
actually had that very similar
conversation with you
about different generations of computer
parts so there's
there's an actual like geographical
element to this exhibition but
an acknowledgement of time and kind of
how technology has changed over time and
therefore
we as individuals who try to communicate
with each other
uh both both just kind of individually
and universally
have to sort of update ourselves every
time we make those shifts
in in communication with each other.
-Yeah and if you look at "Silent 2" which is the other um piece that is made up of the keys
you'll see he's actually
you know some of those keyboards are
discolored you know like they do over
time
and or not so he's also talking about
the there's a temporal element there as
well he's actually
using the the darkened here you go
the darkened tone as pigment, you know he's painting with age you could say.
And so there's something really interesting and cool about that too and he said these are
actually almost impossible to find now
these old um these old keyboards from the 80s and 90s.
So it's a relic as well.
-And it's a real, that real human element he adds into it too with that kind of
trace of you know the residue of the
oils on someone's hands really making
making a significant mark not only on
these works that
are used for communicating developing
and things like that but now he's kind
of transformed them and
almost into this like incredible
landscape of the
the kind of former touch of so many
other people who've interacted with this
piece. It's just beautiful.
-And that's something
that he talked about talks about
I mean that's one of the reasons why he
likes to use um
parts that have been are are being
reclaimed because this idea
of like a human's touch and that it's
had a bodily relationship
and even the new things he said you know
they were made in the factory but they
were made by
not just machines but also people so
that's a very important element
in it as well this whole the human
element in
this in the computers and in in our
virtual age the human element still
endures.
-I think it's so interesting to think
about like community aspects of his work
too because as we're installing these
pieces
they're made up of smaller parts and so
it really gave even our team an
opportunity to
you know we're working collectively
together on something like this which
would
this the scale of this particular piece
took
a day a full day to install I mean you
really get to learn a lot about someone
uh in the day and talking with even with
your colleagues and so even
even inherently in the installation
process of the work he's still
imbuing a sense of communication in
there which is kind of fun.
-Yeah so I mean one
thing I'll add about the last piece that
you were showing "Surface and Shadow"
um that's also really interesting as
well as the idea
and when you zoom in you really see like
the dimensionality of the quote
background
and really deploying here just through
the use of these computer components
with creating depth of field with
creating an escher-like
of type of environment as well
and actually all the red things are
buttons and buttons are
and this is again one of the earlier um
pieces of tightrope pieces from 2016.
So he's carrying with him some of the
elements that are
in the um in the the stitched canvases
uh but these were all bought but not
just reclaimed buttons but he has a
whole
um a whole discussion about the idea of
a button and again a button is on your
shirt
so it has this bodily relationship and
um you know that's
also really interested in in exploring
work and in terms of you can see that
there's this component
the way that the the pieces are made is
they're made on um
on board so that it is composed
you might say um on site like you were
saying
in um although he has a very specific
way that it has to be
composed and as you know system
for for you to be able to to install them.
But the idea is that it's their component so that they can
you know break down and be and travel
easily but also
that his scale can be unlimited he can
add more components if he wants to do a
larger piece
he can have fewer if he wants to make
something smaller so you know when I
asked him about this idea of the grid
which you know artists talk about the
grid he's like you know
from just a way of analyzing my ideas
and that's just the way his mind works
oh it's it's about realizing um a vision
and however he has to get there is it's
just a means to an end one might say.
-Mhm so I have a couple more questions for
you and one was
um are there any particular works in
this exhibition that you're most drawn
to and why?
-Well we talked about the brown
piece which is certainly one of the ones that I I really like
as well as the work in our collection and it was interesting um the piece in our collection when I was
talking to Elias about he said he originally made it and he was going to keep it for himself
and then decided um to sell it so I felt very honored that it was a piece that he liked enough
to want to keep in his own collection.
It's the one on the left there um which is mine, which is belongs to the Wellin.
-And kudos for me these two are
together.
-No I love that they're together because
they're two I mean they're all I mean
they're all my favorites in different
ways.
For this it was interesting because
what I liked about it was that
um the bottom part is evocative of
figures it's also evocative of landscape
and we also have this sort of celestial
thing going on the top which is
sort of embodied a lot of the different
aspects of it and when I asked Elias
about this particular work he said that
um the things that are at the bottom he
sees them as
figures and he sees them as figures
jostling for
um for freedom and you see a lot in the
work as well
uh there's a whole group of work called
inboxes
where you'll see that the wire is very
contained
um and felt he was feeling very
contained himself um like the the piece from the
Royal Ontario Museum there we go, yep um he was feeling very...
-It's almost like I know the show.
(laughter)
-I would hope so! And so
he at the time it really reflects his
mental state and he will say
he will say that over and over again
that these works are really evocative
where he is in that moment and so you
can see
the square wires below and embedded
um and that was because feeling really
contained
and he really wanted to to explore
explore that state of mind.
One of the other pieces I really like is
called "Whirlwind" and it's the
twitter piece we call it here at the Wellin.
-Twitter piece, yes.
-There it is and again I hope you get to see this in
person because the color is not
coming through which is
always the way um but you know
he made this piece in the wake of the
2016 election and he said to me now we
have a twitter president.
But it's also a bigger conversation
because you know what is twitter but a
way of communicating
um and then you have the doves as well
so visually it's about
sort of trying to find some some peace
you know
through the twitter symbol um and also
this idea of multiplicity which comes up
again and again in the work.
There's a lot of repetition in terms of
both his process and his imagery that
comes up again and again.
-Absolutely, so before we take
questions from anybody who is on the
instagram live
uh my final question is what would you
like viewers to take away from the exhibition?
-Well you know again I in a way I always
want the artist voice to be heard and I
hope you'll watch the video as well
because it's really Elias in his own
words talking about the work.
So in terms of the takeaway I would
say
one complex conversation about
um the what technology brings to our
lives and
what it takes from our lives um
and also thinking about sustainability
is a really important aspect
of the work as well and what we can do
individually to support that um then I
think people think of
um contemporary art or art in Africa as
being a certain thing and I think
Elias really considers himself a
citizen of the world and he
he takes freely from a lot of different
traditions you know
it's often been remarked that you know
he reflects
uh textile traditions and he'll be the
first to say you know every society
has has textile traditions and I'm
interested in all of them
and so he's very um he traveled the
world so he's really inspired by a lot
of different things
so I would hope that people would just
look at it with an open mind
uh you know and read it as they wish if
there was a piece in
in the show where I said oh is this
supposed to be
a you know a wisp of smoke and he was
like "sure if you think so Tracy."
So he's very open to people having their own experiences and their own interpretations of the work.
He's in no way trying to dictate how these works are viewed and I think
that's partially the abstraction um why
he's drawn to abstraction because he
really wants people
to have their own personal one-on-one
experience with the works and take
something away from it that's completely their own.
-Absolutely thank you so much this has been so insightful.
I know it's a great opportunity
I know it's a great opportunity for us
to host the exhibition
and especially having a work in the show
as well
as that's part of our permanent
collection that's traveling around the
world
and this kind of uh conversation is
really important to us I know that
uh we're planning on September 24th to
have a panel a zoom panel with yourself
and James Cohen from James Cohen Gallery
uh Elias Sime and Meski as well his
working partner and collaborator and
so we have kind of that coming up in the
works until this exhibition is open to the public.
So we're planning on we're planning on
opening in October and we'll be
announcing some dates and rollouts and
things
soon but we wanted to make sure people
still had
a little bit of a sneak preview on
instagram live which is always kind of
fun and we do what we can do
obviously as an institution while we
continue to be safe so this is a nice
opportunity
we also have virtual offerings on the
Kemper Museum's website as well as some preliminary installation really beautiful installation shots of the show.
We also are we also have the catalog available that the Wellin Museum produced in conjunction with this exhibition.
So there's a lot of great touchstones until
we can kind of meet together again
and see this work in person.
So one of the questions that we have is
how much how much do one of the panels weigh?
Well I think each of them is a little bit different because each of them is made up
into several panels oftentimes. I'll use one of the works that has several panels as an example.
I think in a work like this as you can see in the grid
they're made up of several panels.
One small panel itself
weighs maybe a pound a pound of two
pounds at most
depending on how much material
is on there because oftentimes the wires
are nailed in with tiny little nails so
quite light but together uh these crates
are
quite large so we have we can go from a
couple of pounds to uh collectively
you know in the in the hundreds of
pounds so
something for a large large scale piece
like this.
-And the way they're installed it's like
a bracketing system so like I was saying
it breaks down into these
smaller panels and so one installs the
brackets and then one installs the
the pieces from the bottom up and so
it's kind of interesting too
as you're installing the you know the
piece emerges literally.
-But then you have you know in the um stitched work series you know these I call them paintings
oftentimes because one of the things
that I find quite interesting about
Elias's work is that
it really also teeters on uh fiber-based
works
painting uh mixed-media and so
works like this uh still contain a lot
of those same materials like buttons
but because they're made largely of
fiber they're they're quite lighter and
can be a similar weight to a painting.
-Yeah I would add to that that you know I
definitely think if the work is
painterly
all of his work is painfully you know
especially
um you know both the Ants and
Ceramicists and the stitched canvases but
also
uh the the tightrope series because you
can see so much variation
there and even the pin that he uses to
hold the wires in
become part of the composition and you
you see that
you know the way the light hits it it's
very deliberate he's done a lot of
research to pick the right pins
so the pins become say the lines or
something and then the wires are both
linear but they're also color
they create shadow so I really do think
of him as painting
with these other materials and he said
he likes the challenge that that
presents
you know it's not just him going up to a
canvas with paints it's not that he
can't do that
but he chooses to use these materials
and work with those materials it's a
collaboration that he has with them.
-All the materials have a major purpose too within the works themselves.
Another question is what was it like
visiting the uh Zoma Museum?
It was otherworldly I think.
I mean um one of the fantastic things
is to learn that um not only is it a
place for
art and education but it is uh
built with sustainability in mind and a
care
for the not for the landscape
itself the city and the community um
Meski had mentioned that
uh the rock walls that were built were
designed
to create clean water runoff because it
abuts a major river that runs through Addis.
There is a real concentration on food and
eating and how children learn the
importance of that in their lives.
There's spaces where
Elias is build making the buildings
himself so there's a real attention to
the history of architecture
in Addis and inEthiopia but in a very
modern sense
in a way that he is really contributing
to
the continued longevity of how we see
uh Ethiopian architecture kind of
visualized in the modern day.
It's lush it's gorgeous I recommend
anybody who has a chance to visit, to visit. It's a real place of community and education.
Um I don't know if you want to comment on that as well Tracy.
-I would love to add to that.
There's actually also a school for K-4th grade and I was
able to sit in on a meeting with the
parents
in which I didn't understand what they
were saying but Meski
translated for me they emphasized
how transformative their kids going to
this school
was because they that the kids were
bringing home things
teaching the parents and it's about
cooking and it's about
you know eating fresh foods and all
kinds of things that you learn
through a sustainable space um
and that's a really important element of
Zoma as well.
So there's also a library, an exhibition
space, a children's space for crafts,
there's a restaurant and it's
all stuff that's grown there,
you know there's she they have cows, they
have animals, she loves their cows, I love
those cows!
Yeah so you know it really like in a way
to me it almost feels like futuristic
but it's it's futuristic in a way that
really
um harkens to basic
ideas you know basic ideas of sustainability.
Alice Waters I know is a big influence on Meski,
but a lot of the techniques she learned
about clean water and things like that
she learned from her family,
her dad owned farms as well um and so passing that on is is a really important aspect of their work.
And they also recently completed a major
project um at the the palace
where the prime minister used to live but the whole idea is to create it into a public space.
That is another beautiful space that brings together both architecture and the natural world
and just sort of
jumping off of what you were saying about the architecture
is that Elias and Meski have spent a long time studying the architecture of Ethiopia,
and traditional architecture which is wattle and daub,
 like a straw and mud construction,
and those are the kinds of um of materials that they use.
But yeah it's all with Elias's typical flare which is completely to modernize it and is completely um his own.
-I love too that the philosophy
is based around the caterpillar to butterfly,
and as you move around all of Zoma you can see his rendering of the caterpillar
and then eventually kind of evolving into a butterfly throughout the entire space.
It sort of reminds you of growth and like all kind of renewal happening
and I think that that speaks a lot to everything he touches really.
-I could add to that that though you know
the whole idea is that you know the
the caterpillar is a transformative
symbol right and that's what he's doing
in his work too.
He's taking these motherboards he's
taking keyboards he's taking wires
and he is really transforming them so I
think that this notion
of the transformative is really embedded
both in his work and in his life and
and really in everything that he and
Meski do in all their pursuits.
-Absolutely, well thank you so much for your time
today Tracy and thank you so much for
working on this exhibition it's
in curating this exhibition it's
incredible and
we're so happy to have it here at the
Kemper Museum and
we will be sure to let everyone know
exactly when
we'll be having uh public openings and
having people be
able to see the work in person which is
really what we we need right now.
-Thank you for inviting me and it's so
great to see the show again it's like seeing old friends.
-It is it feels like that and I feel I
feel a little too lucky to be walking
around this
around this space all alone in here by
myself but I hope to share it with everybody soon.
Thank you so much!
-Thank you. Bye bye, take care!
-There we go. Bye!
