African Visual Artist El Anatsui

El Anatsui is a contemporary scultor. Starting his involvement in the arts at the 60s he managed to gain broad popularity through the year experimenting with forms and media.His work has been displayed also in the British Museum in London. Most often in the scope of his art muse are wood and metals as materials for his pieces. He is using these materials to create unique "cloths" representing social, political, phylosophical and many other topics.

Most of his work is based on a context also mentioned in the article about the African art. The context represents the ambiguouty of the trash and art side of the recycled and found materials and in general how the recycled art is connecting two opposites in one such as the beauty and the uglyness, the rich and the poor, etc

"The amazing thing about working with these metallic "fabrics" is that the poverty of the materials used in no way precludes the telling of rich and wonderful stories", El Anatsui

Wall by El Anatsi (2010), Brooklyn Museum

Another aspect of his work is the research he's been doing about the materials he uses and relating them to the concept of his art. In such way he amplifies the meaning of his work and builds a wider social, political, economic and global context around his sculptures.

"I researched the history of how these beverages came to Africa, and found that they were brought by Europeans traders, who exchanged them for various goods, and eventually even for slaves, who were taken to the Americas. The slaves probably worked on farms producing sugar cane, which in turn was used to make the drinks that were exported to Europe and brought back to Africa. So, in a sense, these bottle caps represent a link between the people of Africa, Europe and America. When I work with this medium, I am very much aware of its historic significance. For me, the process of linking the bottle caps to create these artworks is also symbolic, and raises questions about whether the historic links they represent between Africa and other continents were beneficial or destructive." said El Anatsui.

References:
http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/artists/anatsui/index.shtml
http://gulfnews.com/about-gulf-news/al-nisr-portfolio/weekend-review/interview-ghanaian-sculptor-el-anatsui-1.1199799