Rain Has No Father?

Rain Has No Father?

2008
Artist
El Anatsui, Ghanaian, Ewe, b. 1944
Born: Ghana
Work Locations: Nsukka, Nigeria
Culture
Ewe
Country
Ghana
installation
Found bottle tops and copper wire
Funds from Native Arts acquisition fund, U.S. Bank, Richard and Theresa Davis, Douglas Society, Denver Art Museum Volunteer Endowment, Alex Cranberg and Susan Morris, Geta and Janice Asfaw, Saron and Daniel Yohannes, Lee McIntire, Milroy and Sheryl Alexander, Dorothy and Richard Campbell, Wayne Carey and Olivia Thompson, Morris Clark, Rebecca H. Cordes, Kenneth and Rebecca Gart, Tim and Bobbi Hamill, Kalleen and Robert Malone, Meyer and Geri Saltzman, Ann and Gerry Saul, Mary Ellen and Thomas Williams, Nancy and James Williams, Forrest Cason, First Western Trust Bank, Howard and Sandy Gelt, Gene Osborne, Boettcher Foundation, John and Eve Glesne, The Schlegel White Foundation, Jeffrey and Nancy Balter, and Tamara Banks
2008.891
About the Artist

El Anatsui [ah-nat-SOO-ee] was born 1944 in Anyako, Ghana—the youngest, he says, of his father’s 32 children. His mother died when he was quite young, and he was raised by an uncle in a Presbyterian mission. As was common in pre-Independent Ghana, school curriculum, and art school curriculum in particular, were almost entirely Western. Anatsui says this left him feeling restless and rootless and he began looking for ‘‘something that had more relationship to me, as someone growing up in an African country.’’

Anatsui is known for creating art out of found materials such as driftwood, clay, paper, and liquor-bottle tops. He draws on a combination of African aesthetic traditions as well as Western Art history. Plans for this specific work began sometime in 2006, when Curator of Native Arts Nancy Blomberg, along with then Curator of African Art Moyo Okediji, commissioned El Anatsui to create something specifically for the Denver Art Museum. To create his “metal cloths,” Anatsui enlists the help of skilled assistants who work with him in his studio cutting, flattening, and shaping metal liquor bottle tops into design blocks conceived by the artist. Anatsui carefully arranges the different elements on the floor of his studio and, once he is satisfied with the design, his assistants use copper wire to stitch the individual pieces together. Anatsui acknowledges the input of his assistants, noting that the “variety which is needed at this scale comes from the style and the feel of each individual hand.”

Anatsui is currently a Professor of Sculpture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he has lectured since 1975. His work appears in numerous international and American art museums, including The British Museum in London, Le Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

What Inspired It

"Art grows out of each particular situation and I believe that artists are better off working with whatever their environment throws up.” - El Anatsui

While out one day, Anatsui came across a bag of liquor bottle tops that were sitting in a bush. He took them back to his studio thinking that he might be able to use them at some point. “I kept the bottle caps in the studio for several months until the idea eventually came to me that by stitching them together I could get them to articulate some statement,” says Anatsui. As the metal pieces were stitched together, he noticed that his artworks began to resemble fabric cloths. “Incidentally too, the colours of the caps seemed to replicate those of traditional kente cloths” (a West African weaving tradition).

While it would be easy to suggest that Anatsui is recycling materials in his artworks, he doesn’t see it that way. Rather, he describes his use of found materials as a “transformation” of those materials. For Anatsui, the inclusion of bottle caps suggests a link between European and African histories: “To me, the bottle tops encapsulate the essence of the alcoholic drinks which were brought to Africa by Europeans as trade items at the time of the earliest contact between the two peoples.”

When creating Rain Has No Father?, El Anatsui was inspired by the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. The silver cloth is perforated with slashing vertical elements symbolizing “the rain which gives way to life forms.” The three multicolored blocks spread across the top are formed from hundreds of pieces of metal carefully made into tiny open squares—perhaps suggesting clouds holding masses of rain droplets about to be released.

Details

Bottle Caps

Each bottle top, once flattened, is about 4 inches long and 1 inch wide. Gina Laurin, DAM conservator, who worked on repairing the artwork before it was hung, estimates that 9,000 bottle tops were used to make this particular piece. Given the number of artworks Anatsui has created in the last several years, it is currently hard to find used tops. He now goes straight to the distillery to acquire the bottle caps, making newer shinier works.

Copper Wire

Anatsui uses copper wire to hold each piece of aluminum in place. “The process of stitching, especially the repetitive aspect, slows down action and I believe makes thinking deeper,” says Anatsui. “It’s like the effect of a good mantra on the mind.”

Folds

The folds are created in the act of hanging the piece. Anatsui prefers museums to install the metal cloths and create folds. Rain Has no Father? arrived at the museum folded up inside a box. Curator Nancy Blomberg began experimenting with small prototypes—digital images on canvas, 8 ½ x 11 inches—to figure out how the piece would be hung in the gallery. While this was helpful, it was during installation that final decisions on how to best display the work of art were made. The curatorial, installation, and conservation staffs helped to devise a system of pulleys that allowed the DAM to hang the piece safely, as well as manipulate it to create the necessary folds. Installation crews spent a day hanging the work.

Shadow

The surface of this piece is not solid. Light passes through, creating a shadow on the back wall.

El Anatsui: Between Heaven and Earth

El Anatsui: Between Heaven and Earth

El Anatsui: Studio Process

El Anatsui: Studio Process

El Anatsui: Interview with Chika Okeke-Agulu

El Anatsui: Interview with Chika Okeke-Agulu

El Anatsui: Rain Has No Father Installation

El Anatsui: Rain Has No Father Installation

More Resources

El Anatsui: Studio Process

In this short clip from PBS' Art21, El Anatsui talks about his studio and provides insight into some of his working process. Check out the full episode of Art21, Change, featuring El Anatsui and other artists.

Interview with El Anatsui

In this video from the Clark Art Institute, El Anatsui discusses the installation of his work at Stone Hill Center with the Clark's curatorial team.

Installing Rain Has No Father? at the Denver Art Museum

DAM Curator of Native Arts and Head Curator Nancy Blomberg demonstrates how she manipulated models of El Anatsui's Rain Has No Father to decide how to hang the piece in the museum.

El Anatsui Installing "Between Earth and Heaven"

El Anatsui installing a piece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Websites

Embrace! Exhibition Website

This page is part of the website for Embrace!, a contemporary art exhibition held at the Denver Art Museum from November 17 - April 4, 2010, and features installation photos as well as additional information about El Anatsui. The exhibition featured works created in response to the unique architecture of the Denver Art Museum's Frederic C. Hamilton Building.

El Anatsui: Gawu

Website for a 2008 exhibition of El Anatsui's work at the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.

El Anatsui’s Website

The artist's official website.

El Anatsui: a Man of the Earth

Transcription of an interview with El Anatsui from the University of Pennsylvania’s African Studies Center.

A Sculptor Who Starts from Scrap

Slide show of El Anatsui's art.

Layers of Meaning in Object Art

This article is about El Anatsui's sculptural work, published by the Washington Post.

The Story Behind the Work

Article published by the Washington Post about El Anatsui's piece, Crumbling Wall.

Books

Spring, Chris. Angaza Africa: African Art Now. London: Laurence King Publishers, 2008.

This book illustrates the diversity and vitality of contemporary African artists around the world.

Funding for object education resources provided by a grant from the Morgridge Family Foundation. Additional funding provided by the William Randolph Hearst Endowment for Education Programs, and Xcel Energy Foundation. We thank our colleagues at the University of Denver Morgridge College of Education.

The images on this page are intended for classroom use only and may not be reproduced for other reasons without the permission of the Denver Art Museum. This object may not currently be on display at the museum.