Location
SE1 9TG
Dates
This exhibition CLOSED on Sun, 14th Apr 2024
Cost: Free of Charge
Description
El Anatsui’s Behind the Red Moon is a monumental sculptural installation made of thousands of metal 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 commission builds on Anatsui’s interest in histories of encounter and the migration of goods and people during the transatlantic slave trade. Sourced in Nigeria, the liquor bottle tops used in this commission form part of a present-day industry built on colonial trade routes.
Behind the Red Moon is staged as an artwork in three acts. Visitors are invited to embark on a journey of movement and interaction through the hangings, a dance between bodies and sculptures.
Viewing the hangings from afar, a landscape of symbols is revealed: the moon, the sail, the wave, the earth, and the wall. Up close, the bottle tops’ logos speak to the material’s social lives as commodities of a global industry built on colonial trade routes. Together, the past and present of Africa and Europe merge into sculptural forms that hang in the air and appear to float across the space. The hangings embody Anatsui’s idea of the ‘non-fixed form’, and are part of his highly experimental approach to sculpture.
Anatsui engages with the poetic possibilities of his materials. ‘Each material has its properties, physical and even spiritual,’ he explains. Behind the Red Moon explores elemental forces interwoven with human histories of power, oppression, dispersion and survival.
Contact and Booking Details
More information at this website.
No need to book tickets - just turn up on the day.
Disclaimer
The information and prices in this listing are presumed to be correct at the time of publishing, but please always check with the venue before making a special trip.
All images are supplied by the exhibition organiser.
This exhibition runs from Tue, 10th Oct 2023 to Sun, 14th Apr 2024
This event runs over several days/weeks. Dates include:
Other exhibitions open at Tate Modern