This exhibition is one of MAP's latest collaborative projects with Tate. Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is one of the most influential artists today, and was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. This monumental installation was originally conceived and commissioned as the Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon for Tate Modern, London in 2023-2024.
After the Red Moon is a sublime sculptural installation made of thousands of metal bottle tops and fragments. Crumpling, crushing, and stitching them into different compositions, large panels are pieced together to form massive abstract fields of colour, shape, and line. The installation builds on Anatsui's interest in histories of encounter and the migration of goods and people during the transatlantic slave trade. Sourced in Nigeria, the liquor bottle tops used in this commission form part of a present-day industry built on colonial trade routes.
El Anatsui: After the Red Moon was originally conceived and commissioned as the Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon for Tate Modern, London 2023-2024; where it was curated by Osei Bonsu, Curator, International Art and Dina Akhmadeeva, Assistant Curator, International Art. El Anatsui: After the Red Moon is part of a global tour organised by Tate Gallery and is managed by Katherine Finerty, Project Curator, and Hannah Cassens Marshall, Exhibitions Assistant, Tate International Partnerships.
El Anatsui: After the Red Moon is accompanied by a Soundscape composed by Ghanaian-British sound artist Peter Adjaye. The series of immersive soundscapes can be experienced by scanning the QR code on site at MAP.
ABOUT EL ANATSUI
El Anatsui was born in Anyako, Ghana in 1944. He has predominantly lived and worked in Nigeria, and is currently based in Ghana. His highly experimental approach to sculpture embraces a wide range of forms and materials, including wood, ceramics, and found objects. He has experimented with liquor bottle tops since the late 1990s and continues to push the medium's boundaries in novel ways. Aided in his studio by dozens of assistants, Anatsui and his team work together to stitch and assemble his metallic hangings. Embodying Anatsui's idea of the 'non-fixed form', the hangings fold easily in order to travel, and appear different each time they are installed. Interested in the changing histories of the objects he repurposes, Anatsui fuses specific local aesthetic traditions with the global history of abstraction. His choice of materials embodies ideas that have shaped his career over several decades, including the evolution of human civilisation, African decolonisation movements, histories of migration and encounter, and life's existential journeys.
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