El Anatsui

El Anatsui  is an artist that was born Ghana, Nigeria in the year 1944. El Anatsui got his Art Education Postgraduate Diploma at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in 1969. He later went on to do many solo exhibitions, two person exhibitions, selected group exhibitions and international exchange workshops. He worked as a teacher and curatorial still staying close to his art. He has accumulated 8 award so far, the last being in 2000 from the Forum of African Arts. 

El Anatsui's art revolves around physical objects. El Anatsui makes art out of the style of natural or common things like sticks and bottle caps. He is not known for making paintings that hold a lot of meaning made by every brush stroke he takes. He has recently created a blanket out of bottle caps that is now going to be part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. His art has a great deal of texture and sleekness to them. They also produce a kind of aww at the way they are positioned and to there scale. 

His art does help the re-use of objects but that does not fit the goal El Anatsui is trying to fulfill. The message El Anatsui is trying to portray is that even small useless objects can be converted into art. It is not a matter of reusing but a matter of converting things into art, and the aww of a blanket made of bottle caps. 

Personally, I don't have a real connection to his art because it is just a blanket to me. What I do feel is the ascetic his blanket has. I prefer very clean things that are (if a physical art/architecture) unified and connected to interesting things. The positioning matters to me a lot and although his pieces don't pull me in on that sense, the wonder of the materials and the suspected maneuverability of the object is what interests me.