Ground

“Everything starts on the ground.” This sentence opens a paragraph in the middle of a New Yorker profile on the artist El Anatsui, who states that he “always wanted [his] work to be about life.” In reading these words, I realized that I, too, have always wanted my work to be about life and that art and life are one and the same for me. Life is complicated. People think it’s hard, but art is actually simple, elegant, and just what it is. Perhaps that is the secret to life, too—it is what it is. There would be no reason to want art to be any different than it is. So using the same argument, let’s think about life like that, too.

El Anatsui, a Ghanaian sculptor, creates gorgeous, large-scale tapestries out of things others have discarded. They are cleaned, bent, and woven into organic, undulating forms that dignify, glorify, and make sacred the mundane. The artist reportedly lives a simple life, and some of the everyday materials he makes art from include discarded bottle caps, which are generally thought to have no value. And yet, through and with these objects that no one else wanted, he is able to make majestic creations—so large and all-encompassing as to dwarf any sense of their former life. They are what they are, and they are divine. And the work makes us realize that we already have everything we need.

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