El Anatsui - When I Last Wrote to You about Africa

  • 13 years ago
March 30 - June 26, 2011

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center is pleased to present the U.S. debut of El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa, the artist’s first career retrospective. Surveying nearly five decades of the artist’s internationally renowned career, the exhibition features some sixty works in wood, metal, ceramic, painting, print and drawing.

El Anatsui (b. 1944, Ghana) is best known for his most recent sculptures, shimmeringly beautiful and elaborately wrought large-scale wall hangings made from discarded liquor-bottle tops. Drawing on traditional idioms and contemporary art practices, his work resonates materially and symbolically with the cultural and historical conditions of West Africa.

From its earliest to its most recent examples, Anatsui’s work is characterized by the complex and surprising manipulation of materials, labor-intensive methods, and a signature use of color, line and form.

Exhibition curator Lisa Binder writes, “The vocabulary of El Anatsui’s work is inextricably bound to the materials he uses and the way in which seemingly disparate pieces relate to a whole. Although the elements are singularly humble, they become collectively monumental.”

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