[ atmospheric electronic music ]
[ EL ANATSUI ] This is a group photograph.
And in a group photograph,
you are thinking about kinship, you know.
Kinship, it's a particular group.
And then they happen to be close together.
Originally, they were spread wide apart.
You know, so what I've tried to do is,
to bring them together so that they are a group.
I come from a family of very many people,
about 32 siblings,
and– and probably this is a reflection of that.
I was born in Ghana.
My mom died when I was toddler,
pretty young, about two or three.
And so I had to live with my maternal uncle,
you know, a reverend.
And we lived in a mission house off the presbyterian school.
My life revolved only around a mission house
and the church,
school, church, you know.
And I remember that as a kid, pre-kindergarten,
I was intrigued by writings on the doors of offices,
you know, or even classrooms,
you know, that I saw around me.
And I used to sit down and try to
emulate, you know, those writings.
I didn't know what they meant, but, uh–
and I remember that the letter "G"
Was more intriguing to me than all others– all of–
well, I don't know why.
Maybe because it has so many appendages or–
it's not like "C" or the others.
It's a "C" with something else on it.
You know, it was intriguing to me.
I went to art school in Ghana,
which was an offshoot
of the Goldsmiths art school in London.
At the time I went to university,
I didn't know about anybody who was living as an artist.
You know, you knew about art teachers.
I met art teachers in the secondary school.
but there were more teachers than artists, you know.
And then I was wondering how one was going to be
an artist living purely on art.
We knew about doctors. We knew about lawyers.
I constantly kept thinking,
"What precisely do you do as an artist?"
I think that has helped focus me a lot, you know,
At least to concentrate on the practice of art
and see what I can get out of it.
As a matter of principle,
I do not provide installation instructions
for my works.
There's no one particular way
that these are supposed to be installed.
- So to the left a little bit.
Right there.
All right, spear away.
[ EL ANATSUI ] Since they are so free and so loose and so flexible,
It would be difficult to have a specific format
for any one of them at anytime.
- I don't have any other space that I can hit.
- Amanda? - Yeah?
- Okay if we start snipping the ties off?
- I think it is, yeah.
- Okay. Yeah. Start snipping those ties.
When they lift that bar out,
you're gonna need to lift up the work, yeah.
- We're good. Lift up the bar.
[tool whirring]
[ EL ANATSUI ] "Stressed World" is the title that I give my current work.
- Yeah, I want to create some...
some crazy here. - Yeah.
- Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay.
[ EL ANATSUI ] There are so many conflicts going on in the world right now,
Man-made conflicts, natural conflicts:
earthquakes, tsunamis, wars.
I'm not sure about all these–
leave you in a state of kind of siege.
Yeah, your mind is in a state of siege.
- I think it's okay.
- It's nice. [metal clinking]
- Be careful of your wrists, man.
- The media I've worked with so far have been
metal, ceramic, and wood in different forms.
Working with strips of wood,
I changed my approach a little bit,
You know, by working not with strips of wood that's processed,
but then wood which has been used by humans...
and then transform it into something
that you contemplate,
not something you use.
I like the drape of that.
Okay, Sally, I want some relaxation in some places,
and, yeah.
- It's different every time.
- Yeah, every time it's different.
That's the whole idea.
Supposed to change with every venue
and every space.
[ EL ANATSUI ] The ceramic pieces belong to a series that I did.
It was called broken pots.
In most parts of Africa, when a pot is broken,
it's not the end of its life.
This idea of regeneration,
you know, giving form to new life,
bringing about new hope, you know.
And I did these pieces at the time that also–
already in Nigeria.
And the economy of Ghana was really at its lowest point.
You know, and I thought that that was my own way
of affirming something positive,
destruction as a prerequisite for new ideas or for new growth.
When I started working with the bottle caps,
I was purely doing sculpture.
and somehow, inadvertently,
the color scheme of the bottle caps
happened to replicate that of a very popular fabric in Ghana,
The kente cloth.
Colors of kente cloth are traditionally
the reds, the blacks, the yellows.
That created problems,
because when people start looking at it as textiles,
the tendency is for them to stop
looking for any meaning beyond that.
What are bottle caps? Liquor.
How did liquor come into my culture?
And what does it mean?
Three continents has something to do with
the initial ideas that I had about bottle caps.
When the European traders came to Africa for the first time,
they brought items to trade with,
things like drink,
because, eventually,
drinks were exchanged for slaves who were brought to America
to grow more cotton and sugarcane
to make more drink and then ship to Europe.
So the idea of three continents, you know,
and how drink was a link factor between the three.
When I started working with these bottle caps,
I thought it was gonna be a very short run.
Then as time went on,
I saw that the possibilities are just endless.
Initially, I wasn't concerned with color.
Now I'm concerned with color like a painter.
Even the modes of display, they are beginning to expand.
They happen to be displayed predominantly on the wall.
[laughs]
But it could be on anything.
It could be on the floor.
I've showed a couple of them on hedges, you know, on plants.
You know, the concerns of a sculptor
and the concerns of a painter
are inherent in each of the works that I do.
I went to Nigeria because I had an appointment
to teach in the university.
I've lived in Nigeria about 36 years now.
My assistants are young men
from around the vicinity of the studio.
Basically, these are people who just finished high school
and awaiting entry into university.
It takes quite some time
for people to pass the university entrance exam.
And so while they are waiting and preparing for that day,
find time to help me in the studio
and earn some– a living.
Probably because I pay so well
that a lot of them do come to ask whether they could help.
Anybody I bring in has to undergo some basic training
on how to stitch the pieces together,
some basic skills.
The whole process and end product
all have to do with freedom, flexibility, you know.
so right from the instructions they, you know–
you leave a lot of room for people to play around.
So the resulting work tends to have that flexibility in it.
Basically, I work in this way that–
where I pick a medium or a process,
and I work with it for a long period, years.
And it has to take something more powerful or more demanding
to really take me away from it.
At the back of my mind,
I'm seriously looking out for anything
that can come and displace this.
[laughs]
But it would take something really strong to do that,
because I find that each day
I go into handle these bottle caps,
they keep generating fresh ideas.
I lived with my maternal uncle in a different town
from where my father
and the rest of my brothers and sisters lived.
And so I had very little exposure
to the textiles tradition that was very strong with them.
And in art school,
we were introduced to all the areas of art.
And the one that least attracted me was textiles.
You know? [laughs]
But then– I find it intriguing that what I do now is very much
aligned to– like me trying to get away from textiles,
but textiles is following-- [laughs]
following me.
I don't know.
I think the idea of recycle, you know,
I've always kicked against it.
Recycling has to do with the industrial process,
And that's not what I do.
I don't, for instance, retain the bottle caps
back as bottle caps.
Yeah, you know, a new life.
And make them not objects that do something utilitarian,
but objects of contemplation.
[metal clinking]
- Here we go. Come around here like this.
Go like that.
Okay, it's a very long– [laughs]
It's a very long route.
Okay, so let's start from here.
Actually, the river should be emptying out.
and then the source should be– - Coming out--
- In the middle of, yeah.
So this one's come.
This is called Digital River.
And it's composed of digits, you know.
And so it compels one to always try to play around with it.
- This way.
It should begin to swing back... Yeah.
So that it would end maybe somewhere here.
The rivers flow. They do change their course.
And you know, they cut out oxbow lakes.
And all kinds of things and–
you know, I think my work has principally been about change,
You know, and nonfixity of things.
You know, the fact that things are there,
and they have to grow old and change
and do all kinds of things, you know.
It's not because I'm old now.
[laughs]