The trash of life is Elias Sime's art

While the ordinariness of the materials might lead some to relegate the work to the level of craft or folk art, that would be a mistake, says SMMoA's Ms. Longhauser. "This is very knowing art," she says, pointing to the sophistication of the designs as well as the techniques.

Indeed, Sellars says, during the Vienna festival, Sime's work involved creating new troughs of fresh mud daily, which he did in a performance space. Elias dressed for the occasion, and one day he even wore a three-piece suit. "The children loved that," Sellars says.

The artist attended design school in Addis Ababa, not by choice but because the school, then under Russian administration, assigned students an area of study. But once he emerged, he began to explore his artistic inclinations. Early works, such as a collage depicting the sort of mobile grocery store once common in Ethiopia, show his affection for recycled materials (his signature is hidden in a bottle cap).

Sime's affinity for found objects is not ironic in the tradition of Western artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who framed a toilet as a satiric statement about notions of art. Rather, says Sellars, his appreciation for the possibilities of his environment is a spirit he shares with other African artists who, adds art critic Edward Goldman, do not have the luxury of waste.

Peter Clothier, a British critic and former dean of the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, calls Sime a modern shaman, an artist who understands the spiritual connection between life and art.

"At once primitive in their magic and intensely contemporary in aesthetic sophistication," he says of the works, which might suggest a clash of cultures. Or, he says, "the lost mysterious connection between the primitive and the sophisticated. Between the animate and inanimate, nature and artifact. All this and more, wherever your mind can wander with it."

While the exhibit has elicited a strong critical welcome from some, Mr. Goldman takes a wait-and-see attitude. He notes that interest in the art world for works coming from Africa is very high at the moment. He points out that Nigerian artist El Anatsui was one of the stars of this fall's Venice Biennale. Sime is not yet of that caliber, but, Goldman says, "he has promise."

UCLA's Fowler Museum director Marla Berns points out that this is a momentous first step. "A career retrospective in a major city is an important opportunity for an emerging artist," she says.

Sime's thrones are slated to appear in a special final performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic departing conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen in April. On the program: Igor Stravinsky, an early 20th-century modernist, whose work, says Sellars who is directing the event, was greatly influenced by African art.

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