Recently awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, the Venice Biennale’s highest honor, El Anatsui is renowned for his metal sculptures meticulously assembled from discarded materials, such as liquor bottle caps and scraps of aluminum. Carefully threaded together with copper wire, his diverse materials coalesce into exquisite constellations, abstractions of postcolonial exchange and global engagements that form immense yet contemplative interventions within the exhibition space. In the Ewe language, ‘gli’ is the word for ‘wall,’ and this installation points to the paradoxical nature of walls not only as means to unity and safety, but also as obstacles and barriers that divide and alienate. Like many great walls in history, Gli (Wall), with its gauzy, almost mesh-like transparency, reveals more than it hides. It is a quintessential example from the genre-defying oeuvre that has solidified Anatsui’s status as a groundbreaking visual artist of international critical acclaim.
dimensions variable;
element (a): 320 × 899.2 cm,
element (b): 518.2 × 396.2 cm,
element (c): 746.8 × 502.9 cm,
element (d): 396.2 × 243.8 cm,
element (e): 502.9 × 396.2 cm
