el anatsui wood sculpture


After Anatsui's move from In Sculpture I the artist has used a chain saw to divide and shape camel thorn wood, a wood that is native to Southern Africa. But when I come closer, the dream of transcendence is shattered in a myriad of castaway bottle tops. In search of his identity, he decided to choose his own name: El Anatsui.El’s work often has hidden meanings, but he doesn’t want to impose them on the viewer.

Creating a form that is free, contracting and expanding, capable of being displayed in many ways, on walls, hedges etc.’  When his work is displayed outside, El does not concern himself with the weathering of the bottlecaps, which results in heated discussions with museum directors. Which set my colleagues and me on a search for our own culture. It has taken many years to find artists who can occupy a prominent place on the global circuit while choosing to reside outside the Anatsui uses clay, wood and found objects to create sculptures based on traditional Ghanaian beliefs and other subjects. As a human being, you age and change. The wood was re-purposed from charred timbers after a section of the nearby Falmouth Docks, originally built in 1860 to become an internationally significant port, was destroyed by fire. Photo : Uche James Iroha.People passed without noticing.

El Anatsui Totems, 2004 African Greenheart wood .
For El, this physical flexibility is a metaphor for a certain mentality. But he challenges the traditional notions of sculpture as a three-dimensional and static art. But African art schools still had to be reformed. ‘I believe in the element of change. ‘I thought of tearing things into bits and pieces.’ The use of found objects is not new to the African continent.

But El stopped to pick up the dusty bag filled with discarded bottle tops, and turned them into gold. El’s real father had thirty-two children from five different wives. But he challenges the traditional notions of sculpture as a three-dimensional and static art. Africa was said to have no writing traditions, but here was a form of communication through art.


Now I use that, so the bottle caps are bleached in the sun. El’s father and brother were kente weavers. ‘Who was I?’ he wondered. The curriculum was more British than Ghanaian.

Imagine the patience that was required to make this!

Without knowing it, El was raised by his aunt and uncle. Eventually, alcohol became one of the items used in the transatlantic slave trade.’ El Anatsui came of age after independence. ... After his wood sculptures, El started to work with discarded bottle tops. 1944). They had to say something about life! In 1957, the former British colonies Gold Coast and Togoland were transformed in the new state of Ghana. It was there right from the beginning.

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