This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
Make sure to check in with the gowithYamo app when you visit!
This week, Tate Modern unveiled their eighth annual Hyundai commission, Behind the Red Moon by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Millions of metal liquor bottle tops have been stitched together into a three-part installation in what is the artist’s largest work to date. The undulating forms organically cascade and cut through the industrial setting of the Turbine Hall to tell a story of the migration of goods, and people, during the transatlantic slave trade.
The physical transformation of rubbish into glowing metallic cloth-like wall hangings carries a kind of splendour, and with it also, questions of human history and the elemental power of the natural world. Join us in conversation as co-curator Dina Akhmadeeva guides us through the themes and visual language of El Anatsui’s work, while giving us an insight into the process of working together with the artist.
Hi Dina, could you start off by describing what it is we are seeing?
Of course: ‘Behind the Red Moon’ is this year’s Hyundai commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It’s made up of over two million recycled bottle tops which have been imagined as a sculptural installation in three acts by Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui, who's now based between Nigeria and Ghana. It's a work that invites audiences onto a journey through a landscape of symbols from the sail, to the moon, to the wave, to the world, and to the wall, and finally reaching shore again.
Could you tell us about Anatsui’s choice of recycled bottle tops as a medium; where are they sourced from, and what do they represent to Anatsui?
El Anatsui has been working with the medium of the aluminium bottle top for the last twenty-five years or so. His five-decade career has encompassed experiments in wood, ceramics, and other materials, so the bottle top is a more recent step on his journey. It’s enabled him to experiment with a sense of scale, to experiment with this idea of what he called the ‘non-fixed form’, a kind of fluidity, where every sculpture that he makes is shaped and reshaped depending on the space in which it appears. The aluminium bottle top for El Anatsui comes from the alcohol industry, and he sources the recycled bottle tops in Nigeria. For him, they represent an industry of which the histories have been built up on a colonial encounter between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. So, as materials, they carry this history of the transatlantic slave trade and this history of the migration of both goods and people across waters across the Atlantic Ocean in particular. This gives it this balance of carrying these very, very important social histories that his work has engaged with for decades in the past and present, as well as radical experiments in formal sculptural developments.
As you mentioned, El Anatsui often talks about this idea of the ‘non-fixed form’ – he embraces the differences in appearance each time his works are installed and leaves them in curatorial hands to hang them as they wish. How collaborative was the installation process for Behind the Red Moon between you, as co-curator, and Anatsui?
We have often joked that at some point, we became an extension of El’s studio. Collaboration is essential to elements of his practice. He has a large network of collaborators and studio assistants with whom he makes the sheets that then form the sculptures that you see here today in the Turbine Hall. In the process of co-developing this commission, we have met countless times, we would meet every two weeks on Zoom, and El conducted several visits to the Turbine Hall while both imagining the project and finessing and realising it. El is a really unique artist in that he always leaves some space for others to contribute. He has this notion of really wanting to bring out the artist in everyone, so the work has been developed as a team, it goes absolutely beyond the curators. This sense of collaboration left room for others to contribute, and imagine how the work can be shaped, which is absolutely integral to El.
The pieces act almost as partitions or “walls” between the viewer and the rest of the Turbine Hall, and Anatsui has previously voiced his intentions of obstructing and disrupting through his work. How is that disruption achieved in Behind the Red Moon?
When El was first coming up with ideas for the commission, he was very conscious of the spatial implications of the Turbine Hall, and the feeling of the space as a piece of industrial and post-industrial architecture. He wanted to interrupt the connotations of industry somehow, with a really precise, thorough, slow, laborious process of making, he often talks about how important it is that his sculptures are made by hand. The idea of interrupting the space is also the form of labour that intervenes in these industrial processes by which this architecture has been formed. And you mentioned the idea of walls and obstructions, El talks about walls as obstructions, but at the same time, he thinks of them as transparent, because he thinks of walls as spaces that engender curiosity, which he suggests gets imagination to the other side. So he thinks of walls as being both obstructions, but at the same time, ways of overcoming something, or spaces to overcome through ingenuity and imagination. And the title of Behind the Red Moon even suggests this idea of what's on the other side of the wall, and this idea of navigating of different kinds of looking of seeing what's beyond the first glance, which is absolutely essential to the commission.
You mentioned the industrial architecture of the Tubine Hall; how does the context of exhibiting in a post-industrial space also fit with the themes in Anatsui’s work?
When El first came into the space, he spoke about imagining it as a kind of ship. So the journey that begins when you enter the Turbine Hall and see this huge billowing sail with the red moon across it is absolutely a kind of mark of transforming the whole space into that of a ship. We’ve really noticed that El has also pushed the formal experimentation of his sculptures absolutely to the next level; the sail has been made with very elaborate engineering through which his sculptures have taken on a new form. He’s been playing with the idea of the fragment, which is what you encounter in the second sculpture, which we call ‘The World’. He also highlights the importance of mathematics and bringing these elements together into an almost perfect circle, this form of the earth. And so, if you look at the bottle-top sculptures, which he started playing with the possibilities of in the early 2000s, you see that many of them are located on the wall. And here you see they've come into space, with El imagining all of their possibilities sculpturally but also conceptually, and in the social andhistorical implications.
El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon is showing at Tate Modern until 14th April 2024
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