Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
88
| 89
90
Over the course of a career that has spanned forty years, Anatsui has been a pioneer in identifying and harvesting a variety of
natural and man-made materials from his immediate environment as media for radically new sculptural genres. His materials have included tropical hardwood, broken ceramic pots, grain
mortars, evaporated milk tin lids, cassava graters, driftwood,
and most recently discarded liquor-bottle caps. In the late 1990s,
Anatsui developed a form of metal textiles or tapestries. Using
the bottle caps discarded by Nigerian distilleries as an experimental material, he sorted them by color, flattened them, and
stitched them together with copper wire. In doing so he found
that he had arranged them in a manner reminiscent of the structure of narrow-band textiles woven in West Africa. With this
dazzling body of work he has developed a new and highly original form of artistry with formal and conceptual links to regional
traditions. Since 1975 Anatsui has lectured at the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka, where he is Professor of Sculpture. An internationally acclaimed artist, he was among Africas first contemporary artists to be featured at the Venice Biennale, in 1990.
(opposite)
2 El Anatsui (b.1944, Ghanaian)
Between Earth and Heaven (2006)
Aluminum, copper wire; 220.3cm x 325.1cm
(86" x 128")
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,
Fred M. and Rita Richman, Noah-Sadie K.
Wachtel Foundation Inc., David and Holly
Ross, Doreen and Gilbert Bassin Family Foundation and William B. Goldstein Gifts, 2007
(2007.96)
In this work, the classic kente textile tradition
produced by Asante and Ewe weavers has
been subjected to a complete transformation and yet is recognizable in vestigial form.
Through the animated surface of a sculptural
idiom Anatsui calls attention to the dynamism
of Ghanaian textiles, whose shimmering luminosity, dense composition, and immense rippling presence viscerally engage the viewer
(this page)
3 Atta Kwami (b. 1956, Ghanaian)
Juapong (2006)
Relief print on paper; 35.6cm x 24.9cm (14"
x 9")
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,
Janet Lee Kadesky Ruttenberg Fund, in
honor of Colta Ives, 2008 (2008.293.1)
This print is one of series named after Ewe
towns in Ghanas Volta Region, where weaving is practiced and the artist was raised.
The titles of the seriesKpong, Kpetoe,
Vane, Tsito, and Juapongwere
selected for their association with textile
design as well as their sonorous musical
quality.
| 91
92
| 93
94
| 95
96
textile art at the Winchester School of Art in the UK, she was
never interested in designing fabrics. Instead she came to exploit
textiles as a meaningful vehicle for creative expression following
journeys of self-discovery extending from the Himalayas to Iceland and from India to Mali. During those nomadic explorations
she derived a basic level of personal security from a simple scarf
that makes its appearance in her video The Nightingale.
Raised and based in Britain while of Kenyan heritage, Ndiritus
experience has instilled in her a lack of affiliation with any one
place and a belief in the importance of obtaining an awareness of
as broad a spectrum of experiences as possible. Her experiences
outside the West have led her to reflect on the way that art elsewhere is more seamlessly a part of every-day life, as in the way
she found textiles to be integrated into Malian society. In drawing from that tradition, she has sought to manipulate textiles as
vehicles for eliciting emotional responses and as objects of aesthetic contemplation in concert with the body. Among Ndiritus
international presentations of her work has been a solo exhibition at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
| 97
10 Wrapper
Senegal
Second half of the 19th century
Cotton, indigo dye; 152cm x 224cm (60" x L.
88")
Lent by The British Museum, London
(Af1934,0307.246)
Provenance: Collected in West Africa between
18801900 by Charles Beving, Sr.
In 1990 I developed another way of questioning ideas about cultural authenticity. I started to use African fabric purchased from
Brixton Market in my work. Batik, which is commonly known as
African fabric, has its origins in Indonesia and is industrially
produced in Holland and Manchester for export to Africa, where
it is made into traditional dress. The adoption of the fabric, particularly in West Africa, has led to the development of local industries which also manufacture fabrics In my own practice, I have
used the fabrics as a metaphor for challenging various notions of
authenticity both in art and identity (London, 1996).
Yinka Shonibares use of industrially manufactured Dutch
wax prints in his work reflects on the most recent chapter of
the history of trade between Africa and the West, the nature of
that relationship, and assumptions about creativity and identity.
Shonibares sharp insights into this history reflect his own personal trajectory of being born in England to Nigerian parents,
spending formative years of his youth in Lagos, and pursuing
his vocation as an artist in Britain. With thoughtful ingenuity,
visual poetry, satirical humor, and aesthetic panache his work
subverts misconceptions about racial, class, and cultural identity
and distinctions between high and low art. Trained as a painter
and a graduate of Goldsmiths College of the University of London, Shonibare has developed his ideas in a variety of media that
include installation art, photography, and film. In each of these,
he has drawn upon cloth as a prominent formal element that
suggests to the viewer that things are not what they may appear
to be at first glance. His use of this complex signifier has ranged
from austerely stretching it as a canvas to lavish deployment in
theatrical tableaux that foil established icons of Western culture.
In 2004 Shonibare was nominated for the Turner Prize and
in 2005 was awarded the title Member of the British Empire in
recognition of his service to the nation. Most recently his proposal for a public sculpture for the Fourth Plinth site in Londons
Trafalgar Square was selected and in Fall 2008 his work was the
focus of a mid-career retrospective organized by the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia and traveling to the
Brooklyn Museum, New York.
98
| 99