Art Review of “Between Earth and Heaven”

Author: Connor Johnson

El Anatsui is being honored at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with a gallery. This gallery

exemplifies Anatsui’s artistic abilities with his piece “Between Heaven and Earth”.

This piece is a woven masterpiece created with metal and aluminum that hangs from the wall on

the far end of the gallery. Anatsui hung this piece from the wall to draw people to it and give

them the option on how they wanted to view it. He gave them this option by making the piece

have multiple viewpoints, one from heaven and one from earth. As I stated before this work was

made from metal and aluminum which gives it the effect of a quilt with the way it is woven

together, but also with the changing of metal colors in certain parts of the piece it allows your

eyes to be drawn to different parts of the piece of art and lets your mind be creative with how

you interpret the work. Furthermore, the changing of metal can signify the difference in heaven

and earth.

Anatsui used the creative idea of making this from recycled and reclaimed metals. He used his

well-trained eyes to get the pieces as close to perfect as possible, he used a method of making a

small hole in the metal and getting a piece of string through it to pull it through the other pieces

of metal. This method allowed him to weave the pieces together and create this piece. This is a

one of a kind piece that cannot be found anywhere else but Anatsui’s personal collection.
Resources:

“‘Between Earth and Heaven’: El Anatsui and the Art of African Textiles.” Metmuseum.org,
THE MET, 29 June 2011, 01:25:34,
www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/collections/aaoa/sam-el-anatsui.

“Between Earth and Heaven.” Metmuseum.org, www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-

art/2007.96/.

Metmuseum.org, www.metmuseum.org/.