I recently visited the High Museum in Atlanta and saw this piece by artist El Anatsui who was born in Ghana but is living and working primarily in Nigeria. Because of my interest in metal and the African art tradition, this is the artist I had chosen for my Contemporary Art History class presentation last summer. However I had not had an opportunity to view his work in person. The High Museum's African collection was largely traditional works from the 19th and 20th centuries so I was very pleased to see this contemporary example of African art.
There is some room for debate as to why this piece was placed in the traditional African art section and not with the rest of the contemporary art two floors up. While I do think it was useful to see the context and tradition from which El is working, the same could be said of other contemporary artists who were not shown with their influences. Cubist sculptors and American folk artists who drew directly from African traditional art were also shown with their contemporaries and not their African influences. I feel placing El Anatsui's piece with the historical African art instead of his contemporary art peers reinforces the notion that contemporary African art is a continuation of craft and somehow separate from legitimate contemporary 'Art'. The distinction between art and craft is a discussion for another time.
Tango, 2006, Aluminum and Copper Wire
This piece, like much of his work, feels very light and dynamic although it is made out of joined discarded metal labels from liquor bottle necks and is in reality very stiff and heavy. Seeing it in person help me appreciate this contradiction as well as the scale of the work.
This is the Keynote of my presentation from last summer if you are interested in more of El Anatsui's life and work. I would like to see some of the larger, building size pieces at some point. However, he himself said that grand scale does not always make work better and some of the other contemporary pieces I viewed in the High Museum bear this out.