El Anatsui’s art is almost impossible to explain to anyone who has not seen it in person. Aided by a team of assistants in Nigeria, the Ghanaian-born artist bends, twists, and reshapes discarded liquor caps, then punches holes in them and knits them together with metal wire. Though one would expect the results to look commonplace or dilapidated, the results that emerge from his laborious process are richly colored, luxuriantly textured tapestries.
Anatsui’s most recent show at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York included some of the largest, most intricate pieces he has yet created, confirming his status as one of contemporary art’s most brilliant masters of material…
Later this year, a retrospective entitled “El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote To You About Africa,” curated by Lisa Binder, will debut at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum before embarking on a national tour, with the first stop at the Museum of African Art's new Manhattan building, which is set to open in early 2011. The exhibition marks a significant landmark in the artist's career, which first caught the attention of many art-world observers with his appearance at the 1990 Venice Biennale — though he has shown his work since the early 1970s, when he often made his sculptures with chainsaws.
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