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Tariku Shiferaw
It's a love thang, it's a joy thang, Galerie Lelong Exhibitions, 1 April - 15 May 2021

Tariku Shiferaw: It's a love thang, it's a joy thang

Past exhibition
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  • Press Release
    Open on Thursday, April 1 from 10:00am – 7:00 pm with limited capacity. The artist will be present from 4:00pm.

    Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, is pleased to present It’s a love thang, it’s a joy thang, our first solo exhibition with Tariku Shiferaw. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and currently based in New York City, Shiferaw’s practice of mark-making references the historicity of abstract painting and its hierarchical structures embedded in scholarship. It’s a love thang draws inspiration from the ongoing movement of Black joy that has increasingly gained momentum among creatives as a source of community-building and healing.

    The exhibition will present new works to the public from Shiferaw’s ongoing series of paintings One of These Black Boys, which the artist began working on a larger scale in the past year. Titled after songs from musical genres by artists of the African diaspora such as Hip-hop, R&B, Reggae, Afrobeats, Blues, and Jazz, the paintings reiterate the artists’ stage names and song titles. Both stretched on canvas and draped from the wall, the paintings intentionally hold space for the Black persons and cultures they represent. For Shiferaw, working in abstraction entails a re-envisioning of identity and form, the gestural surface in his paintings and mark-making is his reclamation of a space that was denied to many artists.


    A new site-specific installation Jerusalema (Master KG) (2021) embodies both the artist’s lived experience of Black joy and his childhood in Los Angeles, California, creating an environment where reality and fantasy exist on the same plain. A live palm tree in the middle centers the visitor’s attention, an immediate place-maker reminiscent of Shiferaw’s time spent in the neighborhoods of L.A. and a nod to how palm trees are often used to demarcate spaces of relaxation. 

    Reverberating through the space is Shiferaw’s new sound-piece, “Let my Hair Down,” as reflective mylar sheeting and chain-link fencing covers one wall, intimating a version of the visitor’s presence and body into view. On the other wall, small wooden objects are installed against a panel of pink paint; recalling the artist’s early use and subversion of utilitarian shipping pallets to make art. Toi Derricotte’s poem, “Joy is an act of resistance” is printed in a small font, inviting a closer look. She asks, “What does her love have to do with five hundred years of sorrow, then joy coming up like a small breath, a bubble? What does it have to do with the graveyards of the Atlantic, in her mother’s heart?” Derricotte is not alone in embodying Black joy in her practice, its ethos is rooted in a blues-based tradition and has been expressed by creatives across multiple periods and media, from Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou, to the musicians Shiferaw names his works after, including Solange and Kendrick Lamar.

    A highlight of the exhibition, A Boy Is A Gun (Tyler the Creator) (2020) comprises blue paint applied directly to the gallery wall in a rectangular form, with 12 black wooden objects that echo pallets installed on the surface. Previously exhibited at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, the semi-permanence of the paint in the museum and present gallery environment adds another layer to the work that speaks to its realization through another body, removed from the artist’s hand.

    Click here for the Spotify playlist of songs the artworks are named after

  • Installation Shots
  • Works
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  • Artist
    • Tariku Shiferaw

      Tariku Shiferaw

  • News
    • Galerie Lelong: Dialogues

      Galerie Lelong: Dialogues

      Abstraction: Investigations of Social Change May 6, 2021

      With Adebunmi Gbadebo, Samuel Levi Jones, and Tariku Shiferaw, moderated by Seph Rodney
      May 6, 2021
      Watch recording here

      View More
    • Tariku Shiferaw

      Tariku Shiferaw

      In-person exhibition walkthrough with the artist May 6, 2021

      Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 5:00pm
      and Saturday, May 8, 2021 at 2:00pm
       

      View More
    • Tariku Shiferaw

      Tariku Shiferaw

      Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. March 27, 2021

      Developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES)
      California African American Museum, Los Angeles
      Through May 30, 2021

      View More
    • Tariku Shiferaw

      Tariku Shiferaw

      Men of Change: Taking it to the Streets February 1, 2021

      Developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES)
      Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, DC
      Through May 31, 2021

      View More
  • Press
    • Artnet News

      ‘Joy Can Be an Act of Resistance’: Rising-Star Artist Tariku Shiferaw on the Provocatively Happy Ideas Behind His Abstractions, April 26, 2021
    • The Face of America

      April 1, 2021
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New York, NY 10001

T +1 212 315 0470

F +1 212 262 0624

art@galerielelong.com

Galerie Lelong, Paris

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75008 Paris France

T +33 1 45 63 13 19

F +33 1 42 89 34 33

info@galerie-lelong.com

Galerie Lelong, Paris

38, avenue Matignon

75008 Paris France

T +33 1 45 63 13 19

F +33 1 42 89 34 33
info@galerie-lelong.com

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