El Anatsui
Stressed World
2011
Sewn together with copper wire, more than 2’000 bits of discarded aluminium tinker and breathe in unison, forming Anatsui’s curious perception of what the married words ‘stressed’ and ‘world’ mean to him. Bent, scarred and coloured differently, each aluminium scale (once a bottle cap or component of a food tin) embeds into Anatsui’s work an idiosyncratic history of its past use, however long a time this may have lasted. It creates for itself a tiny but significant niche from which it may comfortably expose its story with humility, forming a link that is both invaluable and inseparable to those surrounding it. As one, the scales crystallise into a single breadth of hide, barked and wrinkly, but entirely intact. Their collective imperfections strive to illustrate the strength in their continued existence; the fight against deterioration and their disposal as things supposedly no longer needed and wanted. They emulate the drive behind evolution, or at least that which defines the constant regeneration of something’s purpose and function, as well as the unlikely place from which a new face of beauty may surface. Anatsui’s metal weave expresses the power of self-healing; the ability to grow from pain and use one’s wounds beneficially; the test of tolerance and sustainability, and the resulting reaction and recognition of one’s new skin.
