NYAB Event - Hans Silvester "Natural Fashion"

Hans Silvester "Natural Fashion"

Marlborough (Midtown)

This event has ended.

This is Silvester’s second show with Marlborough in New York and will feature photographs of the extraordinary self-decorating practices of the people of the Surma and Mursi tribes of the Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia. Called “revelatory and disturbing,” (R. Smith, New York Times) Silvester’s photographs capture the astonishing beauty of their rituals, inviting viewers to discover new ways of seeing and appreciating the world.

The nomadic people of the Surma and Mursi tribes are self-decorators: they paint themselves daily with natural pigments and decorate their heads and bodies with plants and flowers in a tradition that seems unchanged for thousands of years. The riverbanks’ bounteous flora, including papyrus, flowers and wild fruit trees, incite self-expression of an infinite nature – wild nuts are stringed together to form headdresses, branches with flowers and berries are intertwined with twigs and grasses to become extravagantly baroque collars and ruffs. This practice stems from preparation for the hunt, but is also of a practical nature, as the decoration protects the skin from the harsh rays of the sun and insects.

Their paintings range from abstract designs of circles, lines, dots and swirls, sometimes focused on specific body parts, to all-over patterns of flowers, zig-zags and fingerprints that form a dazzling array on the entire body. White, yellow, orange and ochre; the natural pigments used are derived from the soil, rocks and plants of their surroundings and combined to create a vast palette of colors. The tribes’ daily paintings are an essential expression of their lives – more elemental to them than music or dance.

Fascinated by the Surma and Mursi tribes’ self-decorating practices and astounded by the beauty of their ephemeral art, Silvester captures the diverse effects that they achieve through their ancient tradition. He has stated, “What’s most important for me is saving, in some way, as much as possible of this truly living art…”