The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Mixed media on canvas with a blotted, blue-green background and a central cream doily surrounded by various painted organic shapes. An oblong orange blob is painted below the doily, a streaking brown blob to the left from which extends black numbers. Painted above is a figure like a deconstructed, highly abstracted elephant, with a stick-figure in a diagram to the right. A vertical line of half yellow, half black almond shapes runs down the right side.

Sirius #2

2022

Ouattara Watts

(Ivorian [Ivory Coast], active United States, b. 1957)
America
Mixed media on canvas
200 x 200 cm (78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in.)
Gift of Agnes Gund in honor of Tanya Coke 2022.103
© Ouattara Watts
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The Cleveland Museum of Art owns a Kanaga mask (1971.289) of the type that is rendered in Sirius #2.

Description

This work features essential elements from a visual vocabulary that Ouattara Watts has developed over the last 45 years: a West African mask floats in the center of a mathematical diagram whose arrows point upward to the heavens and sideways. Ouattara identifies himself as a “citizen of the world.” He grew up in the Ivory Coast, spent a decade in Paris, and then moved to New York, where he has lived since 1989. As seen here, his art reflects the breadth of encounters and ideas that he has accumulated during his travels.
  • 2022
    Collection of the artist
    2022
    (Karma Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art with funds provided by Agnes Gund)
    2022
    Agnes Gund, [1938–2025] New York, NY, 2022, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art, in honor of Tanya Coke
    2022–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Ouattara. Ouattara Watts. Edited by Dieter Buchhart. New York: Karma Books, 2024. Reproduced: p. 413
  • Contemporary Art Rotation - Spring 2023. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 7-September 24, 2023).
  • {{cite web|title=Sirius #2|url=false|author=Ouattara Watts|year=2022|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2022.103