El Anatsui is an internationally recognized contemporary West African artist, born in Ghana but working most of his life in Nigeria. His latest work is a series of metal sculptures made from found scraps—food tins, aluminum roofing, bottle caps, etc. – designed to be a metaphorical commentary on modern consumerism. The works are aesthetically resonant with African assemblages found in shrines but also with African urban landscapes, using precarious piles of imported goods from the markets to create makeshift structures. His freestanding tropical wood pieces are often accented with paints and scarred with flames, at once fresh yet duly informed by ancient wisdoms. El Anatsui’s long quest for a perfectly adapted language was resolved when he discovered the aesthetic and calligraphic resources of the chain-saw. These new approaches, fresh ways of phrasing old statements and the combining of old woodworking traditions with contemporary power tools reflects the theme of destruction and reconstitution and represent the changes experienced in Africa under colonialism and the following independence.
On his latest exhibition: GAWU
"'Ga' contains allusions to many things including metal, and 'Wu' references a fashioned cloak. The word encapsulates the medium, process and the format of the works, and I think it is appropriate for a show in which I am for the first time featuring works all in metal, sewn into extensive sheets."
- El Anatsui, September 2003
This exhibit can be seen in the United States at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art August through December 2005.
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El Anatsui : Fading cloth Artist's statement on materials and process
About six years ago I found a big bag of liquor bottle tops apparently thrown away in the bush. At the time I was searching for a pot monument (pillars of stacked pots, each of which represents a bereavement in the village) that I had seen decades before in that locality. I kept the bottle caps in the studio for several months until the idea eventually came to me that by stitching them together I could get them to articulate some statement. When the process of stitching got underway, I discovered that the result resembled a real fabric cloth. Incidentally too, the colours of the caps seemed to replicate those of traditional kente cloths. In effect the process was subverting the stereotype of metal as a stiff, rigid medium and rather showing it as a soft, pliable, almost sensuous material capable of attaining immense dimensions and being adapted to specific spaces. To me, the bottle tops encapsulate the essence of the alcoholic drinks which were brought to Africa by Europeans as trade items at the time of the earliest contact between the two peoples. Almost all the brands I use are locally distilled. I now source the caps from distillers around Nsukka, where I live and work. I don’t see what I do as recycling; I transform the caps into something else. If there is a direct link between the bottle tops and the fabric cloths, it is probably the fact that they all have names linked to events, people, historical or current issues. Take Ecomog gin: this refers to the regional military intervention force which brought the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia to an end. The brandy called Ebeano (meaning ‘where we are now’) references a popular electioneering slogan from the last political polls in the state in which I live. Similarly kente cloths are given names like takpekpe le Anloga (conference at Anloga) or can be named after a personality. Fading cloth is more of a formalistic name, with the full blooded reds at the top and bottom of the cloth yielding to creams and other pale colours in the centre. Flattening and stitching the caps is laborious and repetitive – a very different process to my earlier work using power tools on wood. I have several assistants working with me, and we start with strips and eventually assemble them into the final composite results. The process of stitching, especially the repetitive aspect, slows down action and I believe makes thinking deeper. It’s like the effect of a good mantra on the mind.
Biography Born in 1944 in Ghana, Anatsui has a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Education from the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. He is Professor of Sculpture at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka, where he has lectured since 1975. He exhibited at the 1990 Venice Biennale, where he received an honourable mention, and was included on the first Johannesburg Biennale in 1995. His most recent solo exhibition Gawu has toured England, Wales and Ireland and in August 2005 opened at the Samuel P Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in the United States. He is included on the anthology exhibition Africa Remix, which has toured Düsseldorf, London and Paris and travels to Tokyo and other cities in 2006/7
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« When I last wrote you about Africa / I used a letter-headed parchment paper / There were many blank slots in the letter... / I can now fill some of these slots because... / I can now mill some of these slots because... / I have grown older ».
What does El Anatsui want to say in these few lines ? What does he want to talk about, our history ? His story ? He admits that, at the time of writing, he had only just started to understand the Africa he refers to... His knowledge had previously been full of blank slots and holes, and it was up to him to fill them by going through the strongest initiatory experience there is : life.
He has gone through three or four stages in this quest for meaning. The first and founding stage was Anyako, in Ghana. The earthly centre of the sculptor's soul. Then came schooldays, and the rift that goes with them. There was History, the one taught at school, and there were his stories, the ones his father and the village chiefs had started to pass down to him. Then came university. Another rift. More initiation on the path of discovery. Other collages. Art school, specialising in sculpture. After graduating he experienced his first conscious aesthetic shock: the women at the market laid their wares out on carved wooden trays that were decorated using pyrography (poker-work). So the truth and meaning behind his research had always been there, right before his eyes.
In 1975, El Anatsui was hired at Nsukka University in Nigeria. Another stage, another move, another shock : the Akwanshi monoliths in the courtyard of the Lagos National Museum, the Nok terracotta and lastly, Igbo body painting, known as Uli. The last stage of this long quest, this search for a perfectly adapted language, came in 1980 in Cummington U.S.A., when he discovered the aesthetic and calligraphic resources of the chain-saw. Relieved of all these discoveries, adventures and journeys, El Anatsui could finally tell himself he had grown up.
El Anatsui is one of few African artists to have asserted their traditions and their relationship with sacredness. He has understood that there is no point in claiming to create a new world ex nihilo. In wanting to take God's place. - Simon Njami, Editor of Revue Noire, Paris
