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Elaff Houmsse

Listen to Sift to Strain

Sift to Strain

steel sheet metal, steel rod, nuts and bolts

2024

It is easy to be passive from where you are standing, and if I am being generous, I could call it self-preservation. I am interested in lines that make up privilege. In the decisions we make and how they serve us. If they serve us. In the spaces you choose to occupy and the ones that were assigned to you. In an internal monologue, if and when it exists. If it exists at all. Where you made your bed as you lie in it. I am interested in the conversations that we never had and the ones we neglected to finish. In our collective normalization. 

 

because it was your hand as it was my hand. 

 

and it was your voice as it was my voice. 

 

and it was your body as it was my body that occupied, gravitated, and lived. 

 

And I’ll create and work in symbols as an attempt to tease out transmissions of accountability, pleading with you to simply slow down and notice. For I refuse to exist for the sake of existence. To let my time be dictated by my desires and indulgences. For the world was not made to fit into my back pocket. And this is not a proclamation of selflessness or righteousness; I am no wiser, nor greater, nor kinder. But a call to listen to the voices layered within the wind. To witness them flatten into the background—for our skies of blue are covered in wallpaper.  

 

As you have taken the time to stand before this work, my only hope is to remind you of moments and tendencies in a fabricated normal. This is my attempt to unravel some and remind you of systems that you have been planted in and participated toward. Because we ran so far from our beginning, and all the work we ever did was stand on the grounds of noticing—where you are, what you have done, and why? 

A large metal sculpture shaped like a hollowed cooking pan
Handle (2024) 15' sheet metal, steel, nuts and bolts 
4 Sifters made out of steal hung on a white background
To Have and To Hold (2024) nine forged steel sifters (Photo Credit: Dawn Tyler)
A glass sculpture stained with charcoal that reads "Sift, Sift, Sift, Strain"
Sift, Sift, Sift (2024) sand casted glass, charcoal 
Hot casted glass squares framed with metal to arrange a half standing half fallen sculpture
RIght Through Me (Safi) (2024), hot casted glass, bronze stamp, steel square tube. (Photo Credit: Dawn Tyler)
Urban Arts Space with the previous pieces on display, including the giant sifter, glass sculptures, and smaller sifters on the wall
(Photo Credit: Dawn Tyler)

Elaff Houmsse, based in Columbus, Ohio, explores the poetic significance of materials in her practice. She uses visual metaphors to navigate the complexities of inherently political art, examining themes of family, place, memory, identity, and the external narratives shaped by broader cultural and social systems.