EL ANATSUI

Following the 2023 Hyundai Commission, Behind the Red Moon, a majestic, three-part installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, Anatsui stands at a reflective moment in his career. The new wooden sculptures are the focus of the two coinciding exhibitions in London and reflect Anatsui’s continued curiosity with material and form through the medium that defined his early body of work while still studying at KNUST University in Kumasi, Ghana, in 1969. His approach was shaped in part by the Sankofa movement in post-independent Ghana, championed a return to Indigenous African arts and sculptural traditions as sources of inspiration as a conscious response to the post-colonial historical context and the imported British art school curriculum. The term Sankofa exhorts the importance of learning from the past, reclaiming lost knowledge, and integrating these lessons into the present to build a stronger future

Made from timbers salvaged from the Nsukka Market in Nigeria, where Anatsui had his principal studio until recently, the wooden reliefs are comprised of multiple narrow strips, arranged in a horizontal format, one next to each other, which can be reconfigured at will. On the surface, the panels are carved into different textures – lines, scratches and burns – as well as painted with various motifs. These varied tessellated forms evoke an abstract cartography, stretching across the surfaces. They are filled with the sense of play and experimentation that has coursed through the entirety of Anatsui’s career.