Image: Nevada Museum of Art, Reno
Tariku Shiferaw’s exhibition ‘Hulet Semāi (Two Skies); A Joyner/Giuffrida Visiting Artist Program’ is on view at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, from August 29 through October 18, 2026. The presentation is installed in the Glenn and Virginia Haldan Gallery on the museum’s first floor and brings together paintings from the artist’s continuing investigation of abstraction, mark-making and systems of visibility.
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Shiferaw grew up in Los Angeles and is based in New York City. The museum describes his practice as multidisciplinary and grounded in an engagement with the history of painting, particularly geometric abstraction. In the works presented here, rectilinear bars and gestural brushstrokes form layered compositions that use a restrained palette to examine how marks operate within contemporary culture.
The exhibition is organized around two interconnected bodies of work, ‘One of These Black Boys’ and ‘Mata Semay,’ a title that the museum translates from Amharic as “night sky.” Through gesture, music, repetition and symbolism, the series investigate diasporic cosmology and modes of recognition. The presentation frames abstraction as both a formal language and a conceptual method for considering movement, identity and the ways histories are made visible or concealed.
Several paintings on view are identified in the museum’s exhibition materials, including ‘Day ’N’ Nite (Kid Cudi)’ from 2026, ‘Caribbean Queen (Billie Ocean)’ from 2021, ‘Session 32 (Summer Walker)’ from 2024, and untitled paintings from 2025 and 2026. The works are acrylic on canvas, with the listed dimensions ranging from 48 by 36 inches to 94 by 36 by 15 inches. The exhibition is sponsored by Pamela Joyner and Fred Giuffrida.
Shiferaw has linked the physical presence of a mark to the ideas and histories that precede it. “A mark, as physical and present as cave-markings… reveals the thinker behind the gesture—an evidence of prior markings of ideas and self onto the space,” the artist says in text provided by the museum. His paintings’ song-based titles also connect the exhibition’s abstract forms to music and to layered histories of movement, rhythm and whose stories are marked or erased in historical narratives.
The museum will present a related public conversation on September 30 from 6 to 7 p.m. In ‘Work in Progress: Tariku Shiferaw in Conversation with Erin Christovale,’ Shiferaw, identified as the Joyner/Giuffrida Artist in Residence, will speak with Christovale, a curator at the Hammer Museum, about mark-making and its power to question, trouble and assert itself in physical, social and political spaces. The conversation is listed as free, with registration available through the museum.
The Nevada Museum of Art is located at 160 West Liberty Street in Reno. Its listed weekly hours are Tuesday through Sunday, with Thursday hours extending from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; the museum is closed on Mondays. ‘Hulet Semāi (Two Skies)’ remains on view in the Glenn and Virginia Haldan Gallery through October 18, 2026.
