Last night I went to see El Anatsui's amazing retrospective at the ROM. This piece is called Peak Project (photos by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist). From far away they look like shimmering, beautiful golden peaks but when you get closer you see that they're made from rusty tin cans. The sculpture is actually crafted out of Peak brand milk can lids, hence the name.
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| Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist |
This piece is called Open(ing) Market and it's made from hundreds of small wooden boxes with product labels glued inside. It looks like a sea of people moving around a market as it opens in the morning.
If you can't make it to the ROM before February 27th, at least read the full Torontoist post and see these photos in full size...
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| Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist |
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| Area B, 2007. Photo from http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post.html |
One of my favourite pieces was Area B, a massive gold sculpture draped from a dark blue wall. I thought the whole exhibit was incredibly well done - the colour of the walls and the shape of the room made Anatsui's work look amazing.
(This picture is from another gallery but the same piece is at the ROM right now.)
Area B is so beautiful and so huge that it is almost overwhelming to look at. Each piece of metal, each bottle cap is painstakingly attached with thin wire and the end result is this fluid golden fabric that seems to weave a million silent stories together.
I'm going to leave you with a video that I think speaks to the beauty of this exhibit. Last weekend I had the pleasure of seeing spoken word artist Carlos Andrés Gómez perform at the What Makes a Man conference at Ryerson. Here's a video of him performing his poem, Save Africa:
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