El Anatsui is only Ghanaian in Time Magazine's '100 Most Influential People of 2023'

US-based Time Magazine have released the 2023 edition of "The 100 Most Influential People of 2023" and it features one Ghanaian who is into the arts, El Anatsui.

The 79-year-old is listed in the 'Artists' category along with the likes Michael B. Jordan, Ali Wong, Salma Ayek Pinault, Zoe Saldana, Simone Leigh and Suzan Lori-Parks among others.

The other categories listed included icons, leaders, pioneers, titans and innovators.

He shares a list that contains among other US president Joe Biden, football stars Lionel Messi and Kyllian Mbappe, King Charles, Salman Rushdie and Olena Zelenska.

Tribute to El Anatsui by Okeke-Agulu

El Anatsui is one of the most impactful artists of our time. As a sculptor, he shows an incomparable capacity to experiment with his materials, medium, and process.

El collects diverse materials, puts them aside in his studio for years, and then returns to them intermittently, until he figures out the right language for inventing completely new sculptural forms.

The breathtaking combination of experimental rigor and inspired vision turns such unassuming materials as printer’s plates or liquor-bottle caps into the magnificent constructions and compositions displayed around the world, from a recent solo show in Seoul to his upcoming commission at London’s Tate Modern.

Less public, but just as important, is El’s unflinching generosity of spirit. As his career grew, so has his remarkable propensity to support not just other artists but also individuals, families, and institutions in his community in Nsukka and across Nigeria. And he does all this without fanfare, as if it is only but a life mission. That, for me, is the mark of greatness.

Okeke-Agulu is an artist, critic, and art historian at Princeton and the author of El Anatsui: The Reinvention of Sculpture

Who is El Anatsui

According to his biography as posted on his official website, he is a Ghanaian sculptor who has spent much of his achievement-packed career living and working in Nigeria.

El Anatsui currently runs a very robust studio practice, situated in Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria, and Tema, Ghana, where some of the most beautiful and touching works of art in the world today are created.

He is one of the most highly acclaimed artists in African History and foremost contemporary artists in the world.

El Anatsui uses resources typically discarded such as liquor bottle caps, cassava graters and newspaper printing plates to create sculpture that defies categorisation.

His use of these materials reflects his interest in reuse, transformation, and an intrinsic desire to connect to his continent while transcending the limitations of place. His work can interrogate the history of colonialism and draw connections between consumption, waste, and the environment, but at the core is his unique formal language that distinguishes his practice.

Anatsui is well-known for large scale sculptures composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of aluminium bottle caps sourced from local alcohol recycling stations and bound together with copper wire. These intricate works, which can grow to be massive in scale, are luminous and weighty, meticulously fabricated yet malleable. He leaves the installations open and encourages the works to take new forms every time they are installed.

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SARA