El Anatsui's exhibition at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art

Events Details

El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale

El Anatsui has consistently worked to transform the formal possibilities of African sculptural idioms. Over 50 years, he has repeatedly revised and reinvented his material and compositional techniques to astonishing effect - from the early smaller wooden reliefs with their incised markings and broken ceramic forms, to the monumental outdoor cement sculptures, and, more recently, the vast and spectacular metal wall and floor works, which blur the boundaries between sculpture, painting and assemblage.

The artist generates meaning out of his material and technical process. For example, the bottle caps come from hard liquors introduced by Europeans as currency - and thus a means of subjugation - during the era of transatlantic slavery and colonisation. The process of cutting, flattening, squeezing, twisting, folding and stitching together with copper wire thousands of these bottle caps into a single work, speaks to the making of human communities out of connected individual subjectivities.

1 October 2019 – 31 January 2020

Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art

Education City, Doha, Qatar

Open daily 9 am to 7 pm, except Friday 1.30 pm – 7 pm.

Admission is free.