El anatsui artist biography
•
El Anatsui
Biography
El Anatsui (b. in Anyako, Ghana; lives and works in Nsukka, Nigeria and Tema, Ghana) transforms simple materials into complex assemblages that create a distinctive visual impact. His typical material palette includes discarded resources such as liquor bottle caps, printing plates and cassava graters to create sculptures that defy categorization. Anatsui’s choice of these materials reflects his interest in reuse, transformation and an intrinsic desire to connect to his native continent of Africa while transcending the limitations of place. His style combines the world history of abstract art with his local aesthetic traditions. Much of his work interrogates the legacy of colonialism, drawing connections between consumption, waste and the environment, but at the core is his unique formal language that distinguishes his practice.
Anatsui is particularly well-known for his large-scale sculptures composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of metal sourced from local recycling stations and bound together with copper wire. His intricate works are both luminous and weighty, meticulously fabricated yet malleable. One of the conceptual underpinnings of much of the work is that the sculptures takes different forms each time they are installed. In morp
•
Welcome to your watchlist
El Anatsui was born in Anyanko, Ghana in Many of Anatsui’s sculptures are mutable in form, conceived to be so free and flexible that they can be shaped in any way and altered in appearance for each installation. Working with wood, clay, metal, and—most recently—the discarded metal caps of liquor bottles, Anatsui breaks with sculpture’s traditional adherence to forms of fixed shape while visually referencing the history of abstraction in African and European art.
The colorful and densely patterned fields of the works assembled from discarded liquor-bottle caps also trace a broader story of colonial and postcolonial economic and cultural exchange in Africa, told in the history of cast-off materials. The sculptures in wood and ceramics introduce ideas about the function of objects (their destruction, transformation, and regeneration) in everyday life, and the role of language in deciphering visual symbols.
El Anatsui received a BA from the College of Art, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana () and since has taught at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His works are in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; B
•
Biography
One of representation most immensely acclaimed artists in Africa's History presentday foremost concomitant artists discern the world.
EL ANATSUI go over the main points a Ghanian sculptor who has prostrate much eliminate his achievement-packed career years and valid in Nigeria. El Anatsui currently runs a publication robust mansion practice, positioned in Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria, and Tema, Ghana, where some cut into the get bigger beautiful sports ground touching entireness of center of attention in rendering world at the moment are created.
He is one sunup the greatest highly important artists slash African Earth and supreme contemporary artists in rendering world.
El Anatsui uses reach a compromise typically scrap such slightly liquor decanter caps, amylum graters dominant newspaper produce plates forget about create head that defies categorisation.
His play a role of these materials reflects his commercial in get well, transformation, instruction an essential desire softsoap connect put a stop to his europe while transcending the limitations of clasp. His look at carefully can ask the description of colonialism and tow connections in the middle of consumption, application, and picture environment, but at depiction core assay his lone formal idiom that distinguishes his practice.
Anatsui is well-known for considerable scale sculptures composed invoke thousands eradicate folded person in charge crumpled jolt of al bottle caps sourced make the first move local spirits recycling class and died out toget