Sharif Bey Acquired by the Art Bridges Foundation

albertz benda is pleased to announce a work by Sharif Bey was recently acquired by the Art Bridges Foundation. Domestic: Commoner is among Sharif Bey’s most ambitious works to date and represents the culmination of a decade of material exploration. Resting on a weathered steel pedestal, the totemic clay bust is adorned by a headdress comprised of oversized cast glass spoons, impaled nails, metal fragments, and approximately 350 hand-modeled clay beads. Its monolithic presence is reminiscent of Benin bronze ceremonial sculpture and the Moai of Easter Island. The sculpture meditates upon the labor of domestic workers, commemorating those who often spend more time within the homes of their employers than with their own family. Bey’s practice reclaims fragments of disparate visual histories and creates a new context for their interpretation, welcoming conjecture and speculation. As an African American whose family history includes enslavement and displacement, Bey forges ancestral identities in his work. For instance, the impaled nails and metal shards that mark the surface of Domestic: Commoner allude to nkisi nkondi, power figures from the Congo region in Central Africa.