El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor who has spent much of his career living and working in Nigeria. His studio is currently located in Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria, and Tema, Ghana.
El Anatsui uses resources typically discarded such as liquor bottle caps, cassava graters, and newspaper printing plates to create sculpture that defies categorization. His use of these materials reflects his interest in reuse, transformation, and an intrinsic desire to connect to his continent. His work interrogates the history of colonialism and draws connections between consumption, waste, and the environment, but at the core is his unique formal language.
The artist is well-known for large scale sculptures composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of aluminum bottle caps sourced from local alcohol recycling stations and bound together with copper wire. These intricate works, which can grow to be massive in scale, are luminous and weighty, meticulously fabricated yet malleable. He leaves the installations open and encourages the works to take new forms every time they are installed.