El Anatsui and his Untitled Work in the Blanton Art Museum El Anatsuis resplendent sculptures have been featured

in the most renowned museums of the world including those in Berlin, Venice, London, Stockholm, Tokyo and New York. Now 56, the Ghanian-born artist has an exhibition history spanning three decades, and has recently received considerable attention from the Western art world for his politically observant, culturally apt, economically symbolic, and thoroughly unique metal sculptures. One of his extensive set of metal wall hangings resides in the University of Texas at Austins Blanton Art Museum. It is an Untitled 2007 work made out of small scraps of aluminum and copper wire intricately bound, or woven, together. This piece is a quintessential example of El Anatsuis current style and ongoing focus. Spanning from 2004 to 2007, and, 2003 to 2008 respectively, Anatsuis most notable exhibitions have been the Africa Remix and Gawu collections, both of which have traveled around the greatest art institutes of the world, receiving passionate global support.1 Now a highly successful and world famous artist, El Anatsuis wall sculptures have become some of the most prized pieces on the international art market today. His most recent exhibition, a retrospective collection subtitled When I Last Wrote to You About Africa opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto Canada the 3rd of October this year and will be touring North America for the next three years.2 Continuing to secure his presence in contemporary art museums throughout the world, El Anatsuis shimmering metal structures have been bought by numerous major museums and his work has been chosen specially several times for biennial exhibitions in Austria, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and the United States. According to

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several eminent art critics, El Anatsui is considered the preeminent African contemporary artist in the world.3 Fundamentally influenced by the West African post-independence art movements during the 1960s and 70s, the Nigerian-based sculptor, El Anatsui, was born in Anyako in the region of Volta in 1944, less than two decades before the Gold Coast achieved independence from Britain in 1957.4 Anatsui therefore grew up and attended college during a tumultuous period in West African history. This atmosphere necessarily had a profound effect on Anatsuis political, cultural, and intellectual development as well as how he depicted these beliefs in his works of art.5 Anatsui attended the College of Art in what is now called the Kwame Mkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumase (or Kumasi) Ghana, from 1965 to 1969. These years were not only formative for him personally but for the whole of Ghana as well which was enduring the aftermath of colonialism and the reformation of its governmental and societal framework. The earthen materials that Anatsui preferred to use to compose his works early in his career served to reflect both the intense nationalism resounding throughout Ghana during the 60s and 70s as well as the immense significance of the earth in West African and indeed all African cultures.6 While proudly celebrating African societal values triumphing over imposed foreign powers, Anatsuis choice to select purely natural materials also served to signify the irreparable environmental destruction the colonists wreaked upon Ghanian land, fouling its historical sacredness and exploiting its natural resources as well as the peoples who had lived in Ghana for centuries. When the artist briefly resided in Wales, Anatsui worked extensively with clay to create objects based loosely on Ghanaian indigenous artwork by using traditional techniques of
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fire scorching on tropical wood and self-made clay.7 The West African artist also at this time began his lifelong interest in depicting, often in abstract sense, the ceremonial Nigerian designs customarily painted on womens skin and the walls of shrines called uli and nsibidi.8 Although currently Anatsui rarely utilizes materials from the natural environment such as charcoal, wood, paint and clay as he did previously, Anatsuis main thematic objective has remained very much the same despite the great shift in medium. Indeed, one can assume that had Anatsui not accidentally discovered the properties and possibilities of refuse art in the 1990s, he would have continued to use traditional materials to represent the motifs with which he was so intrigued. However, the incredible interest and recognition Anatsui garnered throughout the world due entirely to the new format caused the artist to retain the modern style while virtually abandoning the other. In reality, Anatsui achieved fame and fortune primarily because of this choice. The copious pieces of art comprised of refuse that Anatsui and his team have gathered locally over the past 20 years serve to portray the artists original beliefs encapsulated and revitalized in a modern eye-catching media which has given the works a more internationally understood and recognized appeal. Anatsuis work has also become more eloquently and firmly expressed over the past twenty years. Anatsuis current work retains much of its deliberately impassioned and traditionally formulaic character while the new material of disused products has allowed Anatsui to attain a new communicative agent which reflects the modernistic sentiments of globalization and economic production while fulfilling his signature indigenous ritualistic expression. Even the methods used in his studio are symbolic of his ideologies. The weaving of the metal is done in Anatsuis studio with the help of many men similar to the tradition of males collectively
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weaving cloth in Nigerian societies. From local helpers to local trash collecting, these works delineate Anatsuis strong sense of shared labor and the ordinary man in West Africa while deliberately bringing to attention the leftover substances of common peoples everyday lives. Having experienced the rise of the educated Ghanian people in conjunction with the boycotts organized by Ghanian workers during the independence movement, Anatsuis projects usually display both an educated, intellectual stance in the way of its complex construction and highly refined shape in harmony with a more emotionally resonant and direct approach as seen in the brazen color schemes and the thousands of linked and commonly considered worthless scraps of metal which shine like gold. The destructive influence of lasting imperial control together with the Ghanian peoples resistance and tolerance are prevalent subjects throughout Anatsuis many works and the Untitled work at the Blanton is no exception. Anatsuis Untitled work exhibits lines and coloration reminiscent of the Nigerian ceremonial art of uli, which is characterized by spontaneous, asymmetrical, yet balanced linear forms as well as the brilliant color scheme and dynamic designs of kente cloth, commonly worn by Nigerian peoples to this day, are both prominent thematic elements from which Anatsui has said he draws many of his ideas.9 Drawn by the Igbo people of Nigeria, the uli designs of paint or dye are usually produced by women with the intent of increasing the persons beauty and morality for social ceremonies. In Igbo society, beauty and ethical principles are closely linked. This instantaneous connection of beauty with morality as well as the virtual upgrading of an average human body by making it more beautiful adjoins with Anatsuis continual use of kente cloth in his efforts to portray the artworks as vestments made up of a particular persons sum total of what they have consumed over their lifetime. A visual representation of their lifestyle through their refuse.
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Although I had no prior knowledge pertaining to El Anatsui or any familiarity with his compositions, I was immediately drawn to his Untitled work in the Blanton because it appeared to me to be exemplary of truly great contemporary art. Much of the art created in the past decade has been designed to be jarring and thought provoking due to the aggressive linking of oppositional elements. However, to come upon a piece so beautifully in harmony with itself, so freely inhabiting its place of installment, and made so painstakingly from recycled and individually worthless materials caused me to become exceedingly interested in it. The paradox prevalent in every newly made art work was present in this work yet creatively hidden because of the simplicity of the format. Anatsui had made something of great resplendent beauty out of what had been the detritus off liquor bottles. In doing this, Anatsui wound a positive and uplifting message of African resistance in the piece despite the general theme of colonial destruction of indigenous societies and environments which is so often a subject rank with despair. There cannot be a more succinct form of juxtaposition so well executed as in El Anatsuis Untitled piece made in 2007. Its brightly layered and abstract use of color to the shimmering and mesmerizingly intricate structure and rippled form all