Author Description

El Anatsui's Behind the Red Moon is a monumental sculptural installation made of thousands of metal liquor bottle tops and fragments. Crumpling, crushing, and stitching them into different compositions, large panels are pieced together to form massive abstract fields of colour, shape and line. The work builds on Anatsui's interest in histories of encounter and the migration of goods and people during the transatlantic slave trade. In these astonishing hangings the past and present of Africa and Europe merge into sculptural forms that embody Anatsui's idea of the 'non-fixed form' and are part of his highly experimental approach to sculpture. 'Each material has its properties, physical and even spiritual,' he explains.