(piano music)
- [voiceover] We are in the museum of African Art
part of the Smithsonian on the Mall
in Washington, D.C.
and we're looking at a spectacular wall hanging
by a very well known contemporary
african artist from Ghana.
- [voiceover] This work is by El Anatsui
who, while born in Ghana and raised there,
spent most of his time as an artist
in Nsukka, Nigeria.
We're looking at a recent work which is
at first glance, a textile.
- [voiceover] And textile is important in Ghana
and has a long history.
We're probably most familiar with Kente cloth.
- [voiceover] The predominant color in Kente
is gold, which was associated with royalty,
and the Ashanti control of the gold trade.
And so El Anatsui is using gold in this work
to give it that sense of royal reverence
and authority.
- [voiceover] What we're looking at are
small pieces of metal that are reclaimed
most often from liquor bottles that have
been pounded and then wired together,
which returns us to traditional West African culture,
the importance of alcohol and of the libation.
- [voiceover] In many traditional societies in West Africa
there is a strong belief in the importance of
venerating and honoring ancestors,
especially when one eats.
And so before taking that first bite
or that first drink,
you pour libations, you pour a bit of
palm wine, or some other kind of alcohol,
to the ancestors just by dribbling a bit
onto the ground.
And so we have a reference here
to that tradition.
- [voiceover] This was refuse and
what the artist has done is to collect
these items and transform them now
into something that has powerful meaning
and is stunningly beautiful.
- [voiceover] This sculpture, this textile
was made up of pieces that is smaller square sheets
of this material that would have been created
by El Anatsui, and today more so by men
he employs in his workshop who create these squares
and then lay them out.
El Anatsui will often climb up on a ladder
or look from above to figure out
how to arrange them and put them together.
And he may travel with this piece and put it up
or it might just be shipped and it's really
up to the curator how it's going to be hung.
So in each new location it takes on a different form.
Notice it's not flat.
It really is intended to be sculptural and
come out into our space.
- [voiceover] I'm really interested in the idea
that this was something that was done not only
by the artist, but also by his workshop
in the west we often think of that as
detracting from the value of the object because
the artist is not solely responsible for the work.
But in African culture, traditional cloth was often
a more communal activity.
- [voiceover] Absolutely, and so El Anatsui,
while we want that name to be recognized with
this piece of modern art, really acknowledges
that there are other people that come together
to make this possible.
One thing that he also mentioned is that
these objects have had a life before,
and in fact they've been touched and handled and
manipulated by someone, and that
harkens back to the belief system,
you can find this among the Ashanti for example,
this idea of sunsum, or an aura or
an energy that gets transferred into objects
that people handle most often.
So it has an energy, an electricity,
a sort of vitality of this history.
- [voiceover] Those words, energy, vitality,
are so appropriate just visually to the surface.
Look at the way the light plays over,
you called it sculptural, it is not a flat surface.
It intentionally bulges.
There are valleys and hills and our eye rides over
this really sensuous surface.
- [voiceover] We have to remember that this is recyclia,
this is a piece that is completely recycled from materials
that would've otherwise ended up in large
trash heaps just outside of almost any major city
in Africa.
El Anatsui is using his traditional visual vocabulary,
his heritage, to make sense of this very
complicated idea of consumerism
and capitalism, that is such a part
of people's lives in Africa today.
(piano music)