by Alison Goldberg
illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon
illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Bottle Tops. The Art of El Anatsui. By Allison Goldberg illustrated by Elizabeth Zonon.
00:17For Akuns Naibia and Belinda, AG. For Denny, an artist with endless vision. Easy. Acknowledgements.
00:25Thank you to El Anatsui for reviewing the manuscript and for inspiring this book with
00:29his extraordinary art. Thank you to Amarachi Okafor for her valuable input as this book
00:35took shape. AG.
00:55The dirt is red and the sky is silver as El Anatsui crosses a grassy field in Nsukka,
01:15Nigeria. Inside the recycling market metal-roofed stalls display used car parts and empty containers.
01:22Most people come here to find a specific item such as a tire for a bike or leather for shoes.
01:27But El has a different purpose. El looks for old things to create something new. El is an artist.
01:33El has always written his own story, he even named himself El. The youngest of 32 children,
01:39El was born into a large family of weavers, fishermen, poets and musicians. The town where
01:44his family lived was in a British colony called the Gold Coast. When El was very young, his mother
01:50died and he was sent to live with an uncle in a nearby town. El wrote before he could read.
01:55Fascinated by the forms of letters, he copied the names he saw on doors. The headmaster at
02:01his school encouraged him with extra chalk. In art class El painted with watercolor oil and gouache.
02:07From an early age, he began experimenting with ways to tell his stories. El was a teenager in
02:131957 when his country gained its independence from Britain and was renamed Ghana. With this
02:18new freedom he felt a shift. We could decide to do things on our own times. El went to art school.
02:24With no professional artists in his town, he did not know where this would lead. He was determined
02:30to find his own path. As a student, El learned art traditions from Europe such as plaster casting and
02:36drawing techniques. School exposed me to what other cultures were doing in art. I was curious
02:41to know what my people did. El visited the National Cultural Center which exhibited many
02:46Ghanaian art forms. Drumming, dancing, wood carving, weaving, a ding krok cloth, a fabric
02:53stamped with pictures that share ideas made El think about how symbols could tell stories.
02:58One image called Sankofa showed a bird reaching back. It represented drawing from the past. This
03:04idea resonated with El. He wanted to find a way to make art that could connect to the history
03:09of the people around him. In 1975, El moved to Nsukka, Nigeria to teach. El searched for
03:15a material for his art and chose clay. Thinking about how old things could be made into new things,
03:21he used broken pots to make new ones mixing ground up pieces with fresh clay. The new pot acquires
03:27the strength of the old pot. It's like the memory of the old pot. El liked this idea of including
03:32the memories of old objects in his art. He saw it as a way to connect to the past. When the
03:37university's klin broke and El could no longer fire pots, he looked for other ways to apply this
03:42principle. El collected objects, particularly ones that had passed through human hands.
03:47Milk can tin lids, old printer plates, broken cooking utensils, driftwood. He scoured the local
03:54recycling market. What other people saw as scrap, El saw as materials with a history. Materials with
04:00the potential to become art. He thought about the stories these objects carried. Who made them?
04:05Who used them? Who had touched them? How could his art connect to those stories? If you touch
04:10something, you leave a charge on it and anybody else touching it connects with you in a way.
04:15Over decades, El experimented with different materials and techniques. In wood, he made marks
04:21by gouging, sanding, drilling, and burning. El tried a chainsaw which he found had its own long
04:26gauge in the quick straight lines it created. He made sculptures with parts that could be
04:31rearranged. Each time El tried something new, he brought with him the experience of all the
04:36experiments he had done before. Then one day while walking in Nsukka, El noticed something
04:41hidden in the bushes something bright. A torn garbage bag spilled out bottle tops shining
04:46silver, red, yellow, and blue. They had been twisted off many tall glass bottles. When El
04:51grabbed a handful he found he could bend them with his fingers. What was their story? He wondered.
04:57Inside his studio, El and his students tore the bottle tops open. Though the metal was jagged,
05:02they worked with their bare hands to feel the material. El separated the bottle top into parts.
05:08In the metal that wraps around a bottle's neck, he found a band. When he flattened the bands,
05:13the bottle tops could make a variety of shapes. El punched holes into the pieces with an awl and
05:18used copper wire to join them together. Connecting the bottle tops in this way created a rough chain.
05:24El fashioned his invented forms again and again. He made a large patch by attaching dozens of
05:30bottle tops together using the wire-like thread. The patch was flexible and fluid.
05:35The bottle tops jangled and rattled when moved around. Some parts had words on them. The metal
05:40shimmered. The idea eventually came to me that by stitching them together I could get them to
05:45articulate some statement. When the process of stitching got underway, I discovered that the
05:50result resembled a real fabric cloth the colors of the caps seemed to replicate those for traditional
05:55Kent cloths. El expanded on the patch to make a new type of sculpture. He purchased used bottle
06:01tops in Ensuka and assistants helped him flatten shape and assemble the metal. As the artworks grew,
06:07he found ways to add texture and dimension. El kept these experiments in his studio for two years.
06:13They were different from his other work. The bottle tops spoke to him, but would they speak
06:18to anyone else? At last El folded and packed his new creations into crates along with some
06:23other sculptures and shipped them to a gallery in London. When El arrived, he was surprised by
06:28the interest in his bottle top sculptures. Viewers were drawn to their unusual material and size.
06:34Draped on the wall, each one reached more than nine feet tall. Seeing his work displayed in
06:39the gallery and hearing the excitement about the sculptures encouraged El to find out what else he
06:44could make with bottle tops. Soon, El's bottle top sculptures traveled to exhibits in New York,
06:50Dakar, Paris, and Tokyo. An enthusiastic art dealer invited El to participate in a special
06:55exhibit during the Venice Biennale, one of the most famous art shows in the world.
07:00With the help of dozens of local young men who worked as his assistants, El gathered what he
07:04needed for the exhibit. It could take a whole day to make a single small patch and El wanted
07:09hundreds of patches for the large sculpture he had in mind. He scattered paths on the red-tinged
07:15floor. Some pieces were wide, some thin. Some textures were twisting, some flat. The colors
07:20were glimmering and bright. El arranged and rearranged. He added new patches and took others
07:26away. He photographed each composition. He worked like a painter and a sculptor at the same time
07:32considering color surface light and form. As he worked, El thought about history. Bottles like
07:38the ones these tops had sealed originally came from Europe and were brought to Africa by merchants.
07:43This reminded El of the transatlantic slave trade. When I take a bottle cap and I cut it,
07:48I just have the feeling that I am working with the material which was there at the beginning
07:52of the contact between two continents and eventually three continents. El thought about
07:58how old things could be given a new purpose. He had seen people bring scraps of fabric to the
08:03tailor to make patchwork not for fashion but because that was what they had. With bottle tops,
08:08he had found a material close to hand that evoked his history and environment.
08:12They had a past and could have new meaning too. At last he stitched the patches together like a
08:17quilt. In 2007, El brought his bottle tops to Venice. As he hung his 30-foot-tall sculpture,
08:24he created curves to reflect the light and folds for catching shadows. He cut holes to reveal the
08:30building underneath. The sculpture wove together old art traditions and original techniques,
08:35recalling history and shaping the present. Add a shade and flexible. El gave it a name,
08:41fresh and fading memories. Viewers stood close admiring the small metal shapes.
08:46They stood back astonished by the bottle tops transformation into an enormous shimmering cloth.
08:51This sculpture was unlike anything people had ever seen. El had found a new medium for making art.
08:57Linked together, bottle tops can cover buildings. They can tell stories about history and culture
09:02stories that link people together. Today, El's bottle tops tell stories all over the world.
09:08When I started with the aluminum tops I had a small feeling somewhere that it wouldn't last
09:13too long. But today, fresh ideas keep coming and I now feel that it's something endless.
09:18El Anatsui and his artwork. El Anatsui, 2012.
09:23Woman's cloth, 2002. Fresh and fading memories, 2007.
09:29Author's note. In 1995, I spent a college semester in Ghana. I stayed in Accra near
09:35a contemporary art gallery. On the second floor, an unusual sculpture was mounted on the wall.
09:41Made from wood and paint marked and burned it seemed woven with many ideas old and new.
09:46Ancient cloth series was my introduction to El's work and I have so get opportunities to
09:51see his art ever since. While El's art was recognized in 2007, the show in Venice was
09:57a turning point in his career. In addition to the installation of fresh and fading memories,
10:02he exhibited two other sculptures at the Biennale, Dussassa I and Dussassa II,
10:07that were widely acclaimed. Today, El's art is shown inside museums and on the outsides
10:12of buildings all over the world. Each time the bottle top sculptures are displayed they are
10:17arranged and draped differently. Some of El's sculptures have names in U. El's first language
10:23like Glee Witch can mean wall, story, or disrupt, depending on how it is spoken. Some of the names
10:29refer to African history. El finds meaning in the bottle's origins. Objects such as these were
10:34introduced to Africa by Europeans when they came as traders. Alcohol was one of the commodities
10:40brought with them to exchange for goods in Africa. Eventually alcohol became one of the items used
10:45in the transatlantic slave trade. I thought that the bottle caps had a strong reference to the
10:52history of Africa. El encourages people to view his art and see what it says to them what it
10:57makes them feel. When I look at El's art, I am reminded that art does not require fancy tools or
11:03new materials. The things around us can be the raw material for telling our stories and when we're
11:08true to ourselves when we create the art we make can be powerful and unique. Art activity with
11:13recycled materials. Art grows out of each particular situation and I believe that artists are better off
11:20working with whatever their environment throws up. E.T. Anatsui. Many of us come into contact
11:25with food wrappers every day. Like El, you can transform used materials into something new.
11:31For this activity collaborate with friends members or classmates to build a sculpture
11:35from the foil lids of food containers. Each person can build a patch which will then join
11:40with others to create a large tapestry. Materials. Foil lids. Collect the round foil lids from yogurt
11:47applesauce fruit cups and other used food containers. Make sure they are clean and dry.
11:52Paper clips. You will use paper clips as fasteners. Activity. 1. Shape the foil. Fold,
11:59pinch and crush the lids to make a variety of shapes and forms. For example, if you fold the
12:05edges of a circle four times you can make a square like El does with the round part of a bottle top.
12:10Experiment with the material. The foil lids often have a shiny metal side and a printed side and
12:16you can make different designs by choosing which side of the lids you want to expose.
12:202. Once you have a number of shapes fasten them together to create a patch.
12:25With help from an adult carefully pierce the edges of your shapes and loop them together
12:29with paper clips. You can bend the paper clips as needed. 3. When each person has completed their
12:35patch spread them all out. Work together to decide how the patches should connect then
12:40join them with more paper clips. 4. Hang the tapestry. Step back and look.
12:45Where did the materials come from? Who touched them and left a charge?
12:49What stories does the artwork tell? The end.