The Collection

El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor whose transformative practice has earned him recognition as one of the most important contemporary artists of his generation. Working with discarded materials such as liquor bottle caps, cassava graters, printing plates, and tin, Anatsui creates monumental assemblages that address themes of reuse, transformation, colonial history, and global exchange. His large-scale “bottle-top installations,” composed of thousands of crumpled metal pieces bound with copper wire, resemble luminous, cloth-like tapestries that shift form with each installation. These works challenge conventional notions of sculpture as rigid and fixed, instead embracing mutability, flexibility, and continuous reinvention.

Educated at the College of Art, University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (BA, 1969), Anatsui began teaching at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975, where he established a studio practice that continues to thrive today. His art merges African aesthetic traditions with global abstraction, interrogating the cultural and economic histories embedded in cast-off materials while simultaneously creating a new formal language of beauty and resilience.

Anatsui’s work has been featured in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2007), where he achieved global acclaim, and has been celebrated with surveys at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (2010); National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka (2010); and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown (2011). His works are held in prominent collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art (New York), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, British Museum (London), and Centre Pompidou (Paris). In 2023, he was named to TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.