Rain Has No Father? by El Anatsui
2008
Found bottle tops with copper wire
Funds from Native Arts acquisition fund, U.S. Bank Colorado, Douglas Society, DAM Volunteer Endowment, African-American Outreach Committee, and private individuals
Ghana artist El Anatsui creates spectacular art from found materials. His large-scale sculpture for Embrace! is made from the tops of liquor bottles, pressed flat and fastened together with copper wire.
About six years ago I found a big bag of liquor bottle tops apparently thrown away…I kept the bottle caps in the studio for several months until the idea eventually came to me. In effect the process was subverting the stereotype of metal as a stiff, rigid medium and rather showing it as a soft, pliable, almost sensuous material capable of attaining immense dimensions and being adapted to specific spaces.
Look for Rain Has No Father? in the African art galleries on level four of the Hamilton Building. The work, which was created for the DAM’s African art collection, was acquired by the museum and will remain on view after Embrace! closes in April 2010.
© El Anatsui. Photos by Jeff Wells.
Meet the Artist
El Anatsui was born in Ghana in 1944. He earned his BA in art from the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana in 1969, and a postgraduate diploma in art education the same year. Soon after, he became a lecturer at the Specialist Training College (now the University of Winneba) in Winneba, Ghana. He began teaching at the University of Nigeria in 1975 and went on to head the Fine and Applied Arts Department from 1998 to 2000. He now holds the title of Professor of Sculpture. El Anatsui has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad, including participation in the Venice Biennale in 1990 and 2007, the exhibition Africa Remix which toured Europe and Asia, the Johannesburg Biennale 1995 and the Gwangju Biennale 2004. He is in the public collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, the Museum for African Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the British Museum, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Denver Art Museum. He is represented by the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.
Photo of the artist by Lucy Azubuike. Courtesy of El Anatsui.
Recent Work
Rain Has No Father?, 2008. Found bottle tops with copper wire. Funds from Native arts department acquisition fund, U.S. Bank, Douglas Society, DAM Volunteer Endowment, African-American Outreach Committee, and private individuals.
Open(ing) Market, 2004. Metal tins and wood. Collection of the artist.
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