El Anatsui Collage

El Anatsui is a Ghanian sculptor working primarily in Nigeria, where he is a professor at the local college. He is known for his large scale sculptures created from discarded materials like drink caps, printing plates, and cassava graters. His use of these materials draws attention to and build connections with consumption, waste, and the environment.

He works with teams of assistants to bend and fold these discarded items and them bind them with copper wire. When they are woven together they begin to resemble large pieces of shiny fabric. His artwork travels to new museums for display and he encourages curators and staff to help the sculptures take different forms each time they are hung. The NCMA in Raleigh commissioned a sculpture by El Anatsui, Lines That Link Humanity, 2008. It hangs in their permanent collection and took eight to nine months from request to delivery.

When I first introduced this project I used it as a collaborative opportunity. While we have plenty of recycled materials to pull from in our daily lives, it’s not the best idea to have tiny hands bend and shape metal and connect them with pieces of wire. Instead we used scrap paper and staples to create the small pieces that would then be connected together into one larger hanging sculpture. This is an adaptation of that idea for at home use.

MATERIALS:
+ scrap paper
+ glue
+ scissors
+ background paper
+ black pen or marker

El Anatsui works with all sorts of shapes: thin rectangles, rhombus shapes, squares, round pieces, etc. Whatever shape a recycled material can take on, he works with it. Choose one shape to start with. I chose the ellipse. You can add other shapes later if you’d like, but this is an easy way to start. I tried to make my shapes uniform (similar) in size and shape. This will make the next step easier for you.

When you have an abundance of shapes cut out then it’s time to glue them to your background. I started by laying out one column of ellipses. Making sure they fit on my paper first, I then glued each one down with a small amount of glue. Eventually I filled my page and had some pieces of paper leftover. No biggie!

I let these dry for a little bit before adding the “wire” lines. Using my black pen I created connecting wire lines between each ellipse. To make sure I didn’t miss any, I started by only drawing vertically between shapes. Once I finished with that direction I switched to the horizontal connections. You can see that I used three lines but you can choose however many you’d like. I’d still say keep it to one, two, or three, but this is completely up to you artist!

My finished piece is in a small way like a piece of fabric that has been created from something other than cloth, just like El Anatsui’s sculptures. This was a relaxing project because of the repetitive cutting and drawing. You could always create several different papers with varying shapes and then connect them together to create something even larger. I like mine as it is, but it’s nice to know the possibilities don’t stop there. Happy making!