El Anatsui

El Anatsui calls the wall-hangings that he makes Sheets, a name that goes back to the moment that he became excited as a young boy by the African patterns on ceremonial cloths. It was in Africa, too, that he found the material for them: bottle caps and drink cans. ‘Artists are better off when they find their material in their own surroundings’, he once said. ‘That happens everywhere in the world except in the West, where they have developed so-called professional materials. I find these materials and their industrial colors uninteresting.’ Nigerian beer cans now ensure the rich expressive power and dazzling colors of Anatsui’s Sheets.

He also believes in the power of handicraft. His sheets, which are sometimes so large that they could cover the facade of a Venetian palazzo, are made by hand by the inhabitants of the village where he lives. They hammer the bottle caps flat, cut the cans into small straight pieces and solder them together in patterns that Anatsui provides them with. They add their own ideas to these, to the satisfaction of the artist who attaches a lot of value to the creativity that is generated when people work together.

Anatsui has had three large Sheets made for Sonsbeek 2008, with thousands of bottle caps hammered flat and connected together with copper wire. Resting on a steel frame they lie slanted smoothly across a huge rhododendron in the park. Like glittering sheets drying out in the sun.

The smallest of the Sheets was borne during the Procession by the Malburgen District Guild.