As part of activities celebrating the 80th birthday of renowned sculptor and scholar, El Anatsui (Ikedire), who spent 47 of his active career years at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, there will be unveiling of an epochal Book of Homage on February 4, 2024 in Accra, Ghana.
Interested colleagues, friends, relations, associates and former students are requested to send in their short contributions in form of goodwill messages, poems, pictures of original artworks and captivating short tales of their remarkable encounter with El Anatsui to the following email addresses and whatsapp numbers on or before January 22, 2024: Ikenga Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi (Professor of Art History), +2347034761906 krydz.ikwuemesi@unn.edu.ng; Prof Fred Nwodo, +2348030627332 fred.nwodo@unn.edu.ng and Associate Prof G N Mbajiorgu,
+2348050511777 gregory.mbajiorgu@unn.edu.ng.
Listed as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2023 by Time Magazine, El Anatsui is one of the most gifted sculptors in the world. His works are found in virtually every international art gallery, museum and cultural centre across the globe; among them are his aluminum cap sculptures created from waste liquor-bottles tops that demystify the notions of conventional classification in the visual arts.
As Prof Chika Okeke-Agulu, an artist, critic, and art historian at the Princeton University, America, noted, “El Anatsui is one of the most impactful artists of our time. As a sculptor, he shows an incomparable capacity to experiment with his materials, medium, and process.”
The author of El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture said, “El collects diverse materials, puts them aside in his studio for years, and then returns to them intermittently, until he figures out the right language for inventing completely new sculptural forms.”
Since the late 1990s, he has experimented with liquor bottle tops, the product of a global industry built on colonial trade routes while combining African aesthetic traditions with the global history of abstraction.
Over several decades, his practice has explored the evolution of human civilisation, African decolonisation movements, histories of migration and life’s existential journeys.
Embodying Anatsui’s idea of the ‘non-fixed form’, they fold easily to travel and appear differently with each separate installation. A visitor to El’s shows will be awed by the ‘magnificent constructions and compositions’ that are often displayed. This is noticeable in his ongoing show, titled, Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui at Tate Modern, which opened on October 10, 2023 and will remain on view through April 14, 2024.
Curated by Osei Bonsu, Curator, International Art, and Dina Akhmadeeva, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, El Anatsui is the eighth Hyundai Commission artist for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall New site-specific work.
