Cole Tobin - Black River

This art piece is done by El Anatsui. Anatsui has exhibited his work all around including the Clark art institute, rice university art gallery, metropolitan meuseum of art, and many more. El is Ghanaian and was born in 1944. He lives in Nsukka, Nigeria and he calls his piece "black river" and it was created in 2006. It's made out of aluminum bottle labels, bottle caps, and copper wire. He didn't do all of this alone, El worked with a team of assistants to put together all the discarded liquor bottle caps and wrappers Into metallic tapestry. When this piece is pinned to the wall, it almost resembles a topographical map with its rolling hills and valleys. At the center, which looks like a black river has raised many questions as to what is could be - Is it oil? People? Water? Alcohol? - seems to seep across a border. Liquor wrappers with names like "dark sailor" or "black gold" hint at Africa's Long history of slavery and colonialism, as well as today's struggles over natural resources, especially oil. The patterns made by some of the wrappers at the lower right part of the piece resemble traditional Ghanaian kente weavings. When I saw this piece on the wall it intrigued me because it was different then all the others around it. It was shiny, looked like gold on the wall. So I went over to the piece to. Heck out what it was made out of and when I saw that it was made out of bottle caps and wrappers I was totally fought off guard. I chose this piece because I've never heard of or seen an art piece made out of all bottle caps and wrappers