On 30 September 2024, El Anatsui: After the Red Moon embarks upon its inaugural global tour commencing at Museum of Art Pudong (MAP), Shanghai. This exhibition is one of MAP's latest collaborative projects with Tate. Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is one of the most influential artists today, and was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. This monumental installation was originally conceived and commissioned as the Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon for Tate Modern, London in 2023-2024.

After the Red Moon is a sublime 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 installation 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.  

Visitors are invited to embark on a journey of movement and interaction through the hangings, in an intimate choreography, a dance between bodies and sculptures. Viewing the installations 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 its global diaspora 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's cascading metal hangings constitute the largest installation-based exhibition that MAP has held to date. The exhibition not only transforms Hall X but also occupies the entrance lobby for the first time. Staged in three acts: the artwork consists of The Waves, The World, and The Wall. Act I: The Waves was specially redesigned in a site-specific response to MAP's waterfront architecture and its location at the graceful bend of the Huangpu River. In response to bustling port cultures, this newly conceived iteration is inspired by the seafaring journey Anatsui's materials have taken, from Ghana to the UK and now to China. Act II: The World is composed of condensed, transparent sculptures hanging in the middle of the entrance hall suggesting a loose grouping of human figures that converge into the single circular form of the Earth. Act III: The Wall concludes the narrative with a monumental black wall stretching from floor to ceiling in Hall X. From the front it resembles crashing waves, whereas from behind we discover an expressive explosion of texture and colour that conjures a sense of release and hope. 

'Each material has its properties, physical and even spiritual,' the artist explains. After the Red Moon explores elemental forces interwoven with human histories of power, dispersion, and survival. Revealing the poetic possibilities of his materials, El Anatsui explores the entangled relationships and geographies that bind us together. 

El Anatsui: After the Red Moon is accompanied by a Soundscape composed by Ghanaian-British sound artist Peter Adjaye. The series of immersive soundscapes can be experienced by scanning the QR code on site at MAP.

Credit: 

El Anatsui: After the Red Moon was originally conceived and commissioned as the Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon for Tate Modern, London 2023-2024; where it was curated by Osei Bonsu, Curator, International Art and Dina Akhmadeeva, Assistant Curator, International Art. El Anatsui: After the Red Moon is part of a global tour organised by Tate Gallery and is managed by Katherine Finerty, Project Curator, and Hannah Cassens Marshall, Exhibitions Assistant, Tate International Partnerships. 

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/el-anatsui

ABOUT EL ANATSUI

El Anatsui was born in Anyako, Ghana in 1944. He has predominantly lived and worked in Nigeria, and is currently based in Ghana. His highly experimental approach to sculpture embraces a wide range of forms and materials, including wood, ceramics, and found objects. He has experimented with liquor bottle tops since the late 1990s and continues to push the medium's boundaries in novel ways. Aided in his studio by dozens of assistants, Anatsui and his team work together to stitch and assemble his metallic hangings. Embodying Anatsui's idea of the 'non-fixed form', the hangings fold easily in order to travel, and appear different each time they are installed. Interested in the changing histories of the objects he repurposes, Anatsui fuses specific local aesthetic traditions with the global history of abstraction. His choice of materials embodies ideas that have shaped his career over several decades, including the evolution of human civilisation, African decolonisation movements, histories of migration and encounter, and life's existential journeys.