Artists’ Table Brunch and Presentation with Tariku Shiferaw at Watermill Center
Join The Watermill Center + Hamptons Black Arts Council on Saturday, June 21, for a presentation by artist Tariku Shiferaw, followed by a locally sourced meal by Chef Cleon Clarke of Page Sag Harbor in celebration of Juneteenth.
Tariku will be discussing a new series of works that will be included in Superposition Gallery’s MAMI WATA Benefit Exhibition at the Eastville Community Historical Society this summer, made possible by Hamptons Black Arts Council. Sound elements and a new painting from his Mata Semay series will also be temporarily displayed on the grounds of Watermill during Juneteenth weekend.
ABOUT ARTISTS' TABLE
Artists’ Table is Watermill’s year-round brunch and dinner series, offering guests the chance to intimately connect with our Artists-in-Residence. Artists’ Table features a private presentation by our international artists, followed by a chef-prepared meal with locally-sourced ingredients.
Artists' Table at The Watermill Center is supported by Drs. Mark and June Halsey and Halsey Dermatology.
ABOUT TARIKU SHIFERAW
Tariku Shiferaw is known for his practice of mark-making that explores the metaphysical ideas of painting and societal structures. This formal language of geometric abstraction is executed through densely layering material to create “marks,” gestures that interrogate space-making and reference the hierarchy of systems. As the artist explains, “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.”
Apart from paint on canvases, Shiferaw also incorporates ready-made objects and materials in his installations, often using transparent and colored mylar, and subverting their utilitarian characteristics in assembly or hanging to create a body of evocative works that question perception and space. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, growing up in Los Angeles, and currently based in New York City, Shiferaw finds inspiration from the diverse cultures in his environments, particularly in the areas of music and language. Shiferaw’s ongoing series of paintings One of These Black Boys references musical genres that have originated in Black communities—Hip-hop, R&B, Reggae, Afrobeats, Blues, and Jazz—a context that charges the works with musical references, identities, and cultural histories. Shiferaw’s work may be understood in the framework of midcentury abstraction, but the artist also infuses this formal vocabulary with critical observations from popular culture.
Museum exhibitions that have presented works by Tariku Shiferaw include Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2024); Spectrum: On Color & Contemporary Art at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco, California (2023); The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland and Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri (2023); You’d Think By Now at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, New York (2022); Geometries at Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling, New York (2022); Men of Change, organized by The Smithsonian Institution, and held at the California African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles (2021); Unbound at the Zuckerman Museum of Art (ZMA), Kennesaw, Georgia (2020); What’s Love Got to Do with It? at The Drawing Center, New York, New York (2019); A Poet*hical Wager at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Ohio (2017-18); and the 2017 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Shiferaw has participated in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art (Studio), in Open Sessions at The Drawing Center (2018- 2020), and has been an artist-in-residence at the LES Studio Program in New York City, at the World Trade Center through Silver Art Projects, and at ARCAthens, Greece.
Shiferaw was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1983, raised in Los Angeles, California, and now lives and works in New York City.
ABOUT CHEF CLEON CLARK
Chef Cleon Clarke is a Jamaica-born culinary artist and the executive chef at the acclaimed Sag Harbor restaurant, Page. Inspired by his grandmother, he began cooking at a young age and later honed his skills through training at George Brown College and Penn Foster Career School. Clarke launched his professional career in the hotel industry, where he developed his knowledge of French and Italian cuisine. After migrating to the United States in 2007, he embraced the diversity of the American culinary landscape and eventually settled in the Hamptons. At Page, Clarke has continued to refine his craft, exploring the artistry of culinary fusion.
ABOUT HAMPTONS BLACK ARTS COUNCIL
Hamptons Black Arts Council is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization in the State of New York. Founded by Storm Ascher in 2023, Hamptons Black Arts Council leads with the mission to uphold the legacy of Black Arts Institutions on the East End through advocacy, acquisition development, and infrastructure and operations support. The organization aims to increase awareness and advocacy of Black art organizations through public programming, education, and networking. HBAC is continuously growing contemporary collections of artwork by artists of diverse backgrounds through exhibitions and fundraising.
ABOUT SUPERPOSITION GALLERY
Superposition Gallery was founded in 2018 by artist and curator, Storm Ascher. She started her curatorial projects with a mission to subvert gentrification tactics used in urban development through art galleries. Superposition Gallery puts on exhibitions, performances, and events highlighting artists from around the world to foster relationships with collectors and institutions. Representation by Superposition Gallery gives artists a platform to exist in multiple contexts at once. By collaborating with spaces that have a consciousness of the neighborhood in which they reside, Superposition Gallery takes on the life of the nomadic artist and resident. Curatorial projects come to fruition through iterations of borrowed space in Los Angeles, New York, Miami and internationally.
