Tariku Shiferaw is an Ethiopian born artist who explores the nature of societal structures through painting and mark-making. He utilizes Hip-Hop, R&B, Jazz, Blues, and Reggae song titles as a kind of point of reference to real life stories, and emphasizing the everyday struggle of the Black artist, and their since of place. Shiferaw uses pattern to not just develop a specific aesthetic, but to represent Black bodies and how they inhabit a distinct space. Shiferaw was raised in Los Angeles, and has earned a BFA from the University of Southern California, and a MFA from Parsons School of Design.
AMMO: What’s Your AMMO?
Tariku Shiferaw: Everyday life, culture, music (hip-hop, R&B, Blues, Jazz, Reggae), paintings, art, racism, love, hatred, discrimination, other artists who’ve walked the same path before me (Jack Whitten, David Hammons, Romare Bearden), Blackness, rhythm (making paintings is similar to making music. There has to be a flow in thought-process and in making), my peers (other amazing artists around me, too many to mention), writers (Fred Moten, Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Octavia Butler, Claudia Rankine, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison)
A: This issue relates art and spoken word in that visual art can be a type of “unspoken” word. Do you hope the viewers of your work pull some type of “unspoken” word via the use of mark-making?
TS: Words and images do interchange depending on the context, both become stronger with the support of the other. Do I “hope”? No, the viewer will get whatever they want to get out of it. My hopes and worries for the viewer doesn’t dictate the work I make. However, images do tend to stand-in for words. I find the best results to be when the two are combined. In my practice, I use music titles to contextualize my abstract paintings and sculptures. I use music by Black artists to add to my paintings another layer of context. Titling the works with music titles marks the work. It also creates another layer of mark-making within my work.
