El Anatsui (b. 1944, Anyako, Ghana) is best-known for his cascading metallic sculptures constructed of thousands of recycled bottle-tops articulated with copper wire. Over a long-lasting and distinguished career as both artist and educator—serving as Professor of Sculpture and Departmental Head at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka—Anatsui has developed a highly experimental approach to sculpture, embracing a wide range of forms and materials including wood, ceramics and found objects. He has experimented with liquor bottle tops since the late 90s and continues to push the medium’s boundaries in novel ways, creating radical, transformative sculptures which assume new shapes with every installation. Interested in the changing histories of the objects he repurposes into shimmering sculptures, Anatsui fuses specific local aesthetic traditions with the global history of abstraction.

Anatsui has exhibited around the world including recent solo projects at La Conciergerie, Paris (2021); Triumphant Scale at Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019); Kunstmuseum Bern (2020). In 2015, Anatsui was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia and he was recipient of the Charles Wollaston Award at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2013. In 2019, a major installation was exhibited at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, (Zeitz MOCCA), Cape Town, and his work was included in the inaugural Ghana Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Anatsui’s work is held in permanent collections around the world including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; The British Museum, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris.