The Alfred Ceramic Art Museum beginning Feb. 12 will host “Autoethnography,” a solo exhibition by the groundbreaking artist Sharif Bey. An opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 pm on Feb. 12, and the exhibit will run through July 19.
“Autoethnography” provides important examples from all of Bey’s central bodies of work, ranging from wheel-thrown vessels to intricate figurative sculptures, from gargantuan necklace forms to imposing ceramic shields. At the same time, the exhibit will highlight the transition between Bey’s functional pottery and figurative sculpture.
According to Benjamin Evans, Wayne Higby director and principal curator at ACAM, a 10-year-old Sharif Bey discovered in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum many of the ingredients that were to form the basis of his entire artistic practice. Bey grew up in Pittsburgh, where he was enrolled in an after-school program at the Carnegie. His encounters with both dinosaur bones in the natural history wing and the museum’s comprehensive collection of art planted seeds that were to grow steadily throughout his life.
Evans says a principal influence for Bey was his encounter with a nkisi n’kondi, or “power figure,” created within the ancient Kongo community of central and west Africa, whose culture stretches back for millennia. “Perhaps it united the two wings of the museum,” Evans says, “somehow appearing as both natural and cultural, as both the product of human agency and something radiating an otherworldly power, that it left such an impression.”
This idea of objects as vessels of mysterious energy, as containers of spirit, ancestry and power remains tangible in Bey’s work today, Evans says. In his book All the Beauty in the World, Patrick Bringly describes his own reaction to encountering an nkisi, writing: “It wasn’t meant to look like a divine being; it was the divine being and, as such, had to appear as though it existed across a chasm from ordinary human efforts. It had to look a bit like a newborn baby looks: Not an imitation or depiction of anything, but rather a new, miraculous, self-insistent whole.”
These words, according to Evans, express the reaction one has after encountering Sharif Bey’s work for the first time. “Here art is not an imitation of nature, or of anything else for that matter, but a genuine act of creation, bringing forth something radically new into the world. Whether in the figurative nkisi-like vessels, the ‘protest shields,’ the gargantuan necklaces of his “Adornment” series, the monumental figures of the ‘Guardians’ series, or his richly textured pottery, Bey endeavors to create touchstones of power.”
“Autoethnography” moreover goes beyond the linear history of autobiography to explore one’s connection to broader socio-cultural contexts, Evans says. In Bey’s own words, the question is not simply “Who am I?” but rather “Who am I in relation to who we are?”
“In his case,” Evans says, “this often involves understanding himself in the context of the past and present African diaspora, and much of his work directly engages with specific African and Afro-diasporic traditions. But his work also directly reflects his many other shifting cultural identities: a member of a large family in 1990’s Pittsburgh; a husband and father; a highly-trained educator; and someone deeply versed in American studio ceramic history who, from a young age, was fortunate enough to work with some of the most well-known ceramic artists of the time through the Manchester Craftsman’s Guild and summer workshops around the country.”
Hence Bey’s varied work draws on many divergent sources simultaneously and suggests a deliberate tug-of-war of influences and interpretations. A functional vessel might suggest African patterns but also reveal the influence of David MacDonald and Winnie-Owens Hart (whom he has described as important mentors) or other well-known American ceramicists like Val Cushing, Robert Turner, Norm Schulman or Ed Eberle.
“At a time when identity politics continues to dominate contemporary discourse, and many artists turn to their own identities as sources of inspiration,” Evans says, “Sharif Bey’s work goes beyond the solipsism of autobiography to reveal a brilliant ethnographic process that situates the individual rightly in a complex sea of cultural forces.”
