El Anatsui: Art and Life

Susan Mullin Vogel’s El Anatsui: Art and Life examines the artist’s recent studio practice and the bottle-top tapestries that have won him international acclaim. Vogel’s meticulous investigation of Anatsui’s experiment with medium and process and his commitment to nonfixed forms presents the metal sculptures as complex hybrid objects and the artist as a cultural nomad, escaping the static “African artist” identity for the global arena. But by focusing entirely on the bottle-top projects of the last decade, Vogel takes an equivocal position with regard to Anatsui’s creative identity and in the process succumbs to a naive view of “globalism” as an uncomplicated utopia.