El Anatsui: Studio Process | "Exclusive" | Art21

Episode #161: Filmed at his Nsukka, Nigeria studio in 2011, artist El Anatsui describes the collaborative and contemplative setting where his artworks are made. Anatsui employs a team of assistants to construct "blocks" of joined bottle caps that are then shifted around on the studio's floor. In looking at the patterns and textures created by this process, often through his digital photographs, Anatsui is able to form ideas for new work.

Working with wood, clay, metal, and the discarded metal caps of liquor bottles, El Anatsui breaks with sculpture's traditional adherence to forms of fixed shape while visually referencing the history of abstraction in African and European art. Anatsui's works trace a broader story of colonial and postcolonial economic and cultural exchange, told in the history of cast-off materials, while exploring ideas about the everyday function of objects and the role of language in deciphering visual symbols.

Learn more about El Anatsui at:
http://www.art21.org/artists/el-anatsui

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Calistus Eziokwu. Sound: Ian Forster. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: El Anatsui. Special Thanks: Jack Shainman Gallery. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

[El Anatsui: Studio Process]

The studio is located in the university town
of Nsukka

in southeastern Nigeria.

It's about 10, 20 minutes, by walking,
north of the university campus.

There are times when I come in unexpectedly,

and then I'll park my car elsewhere

and walk in and you hear a lot of...

There's a lot of, how do you call it now,
banter. [LAUGHS]

Very loud banter.

When I go in, then they all keep quiet.

[LAUGHS]

Because I always demand that there should
be absolute silence in there--

or as much silence as possible.

Because I try to impress upon them that
a studio is a sacred place

that you come to do some bit of reflection
and thinking.

For each new, say, pattern or texture that
I'm introducing,

I have to show them how it's done,

because I find that, as an artist,

if you don't maintain physical contact with
handling the material, for instance,

the work might end up not having a soul.

First of all, they have to do the units--

we call them "blocks"--

and a block can consist of maybe
two hundred and something bottle caps together.

And so you take these units
and then start playing around with them.

Then that's when you now have to
lay all of them out,

scatter them in the studio,

and then start picking what you need
for each portion of the work.

They put them together in a bunch

and you try to see what it can suggest.

If it's something that you feel is interesting,

or something effective,

then you have started a new idea.

You just play around--

play around, shift around,

and at times, for days,
you can just keep shifting things around.

And taking photographs of them,

and putting them on the computer and...

So I have a lot of images on my computer.

In course of time, I could go back
and just keep looking at this.

You need a very large bank of images--

of effects, of textures--

that I can always refer to,

and they could trigger off new ideas.

Because ideas do come at very unusual times.