He combines such disparate materials as bottle caps, printing plates, cassava graters, copper wiring, and sheet metal into both floor-based sculptures and shimmering wall pieces that sway and flex like cloth, despite their rigid composite materials. In transforming discarded objects into large-scale artworks, Ghanaian-born Anatsui explores the effects of human consumption on the environment and the fraught material and ideological relations between Africa and the Western world at large. Anatsui has exhibited in New York, London, Lagos, Barcelona, and Doha. He has participated in the Venice Biennale twice, once in 1990 and again in 2007, and received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2009. His work has achieved seven figures at auction and belongs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of African Art, and the British Museum, among others.

El Anatsui

In his sculptures and installations, El Anatsui transforms simple, everyday objects into grand, totemic assemblages.

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Paper and Silver is made of paper, printed and hand-cut and hand-sculpted aluminium collage, and copper wire. In monochrome groupings of achromatic colors and strands of complex geometric scaffolding composed of vibrant red, yellow, gold, and blue, a dazzling array of formats and elements from the artist's bottle cap palette make up the composition of the artwork. Correspondingly varied in Paper and Silver is the aluminum collage; whereas the printed metal is flattened in some areas, it is folded and twisted and knotted in others.

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“ Art is a reflection on life. Life isn’t something we can cut and fix. It’s always in a state of flux. „

—El Anatsui