About the Artist
Aluminum liquor bottle caps and copper wire. This work serves as a reminder of temporality
and decay. It is made of thousands of discarded bottle caps and labels sewn together with
copper wire into a monumental hanging. El Anatsui weaves the debris of our consumerism
into a glittering cloth worthy of the long tradition of West African textile production.
Biography
Born in Ghana, El Anatsui takes the broad spectrum of indigenous African cultures as an extended canvas. His central themes concern the erosion of inherited traditions by powerful external forces and the manner of their survival and transmission into the present. Throughout a distinguished forty-year career as an artist and Professor of Sculpture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Anatsui has addressed a vast range of social, political and historical concerns, and embraced an equally diverse vocabulary of media and process. His creations are made with anything from chainsaws and welding torches to an intricate and meditative 'sewing' process. His work is in numerous public and private collections includingThe Asele Institute, The British Museum, Centre Pompidou, de Young Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum Kunst Palast, The Newark Museum, The Nigeria National Art Gallery, Segataya Museum and the Smithsonian Institution.
Find out more about the other artists
Noor Al-Bastaki
| El Anatsui
| Subhankar Banerjee
| Catherine Chalmers
| Ichi Ikeda
| Cecilia Paredes
| Philippe Pastor