For his latest act for the Vienna State Opera house, XOHANAMI, El Anatsui circles back to his beginnings as an artist who, having received an education in Western theory and practice, longed to work with materials and a visual language from his own culture. With this image, the audience of the opera house is confronted with a crowd of inanimate objects, resembling figures, with round market trays for heads and shards from wood pallets for bodies. They are arranged to evoke a human-like presence, each with its own character: a slit in the wood suggests a mouth, or markings from everyday use suggest an eye or a nose. There is the sense that this vast wooden crowd is aware of us as viewers, and they meet our gaze rather than permitting our passive voyeurism. In this way, the image establishes a dialogue of sorts: a gathering of silent figures who, in their stillness, mirror the audience gathered before them with a presence that feels both uncanny and familiar.
The sensation of viewing the image is akin to standing on stage before an audience. Those nearest appear clearly defined while, as the eye moves upward over the crowd, the others fade and merge into a mass of wooden heads. Anatsui offers the opera audience the feeling of performing, of being watched, reversing the role of performer and viewer between acts, when the curtain again becomes visible. In doing this, he makes viewers conscious of the positions they occupy, holding up a metaphorical mirror to the scene unfolding.
Rooted in Ghanaian vernacular, Anatsui’s XOHANAMI presents a stark contrast to the grand, richly ornamented interior of the Vienna State Opera’s auditorium. The language of the Opera’s interior is specific coded through materials that historically signify luxury in European culture: gilding, red velvet and decorative stucco. Into this setting, Anatsui deliberately inserts an image composed of wooden objects salvaged from everyday life in West Africa, a distinct "other", from far outside of Austrian culture. In the 1970s, when he first employed the market trays in his work, he displayed them as wall-mounted plaques. Using heated iron rods, he engraved their surfaces with Adinkra symbols of Akan culture, which are visual motifs that convey proverbs, cultural values, and philosophical ideas.
Revisiting the same material fifty years later, now Anatsui leaves the trays unembellished. Here, their weathered surfaces and the marks from daily use tell stories of quotidian life that require no additional decoration. In their raw state, they speak of the markets from where they come, places that Anatsui describes as "vibrant theatres of daily life and exchange". In this way, he brings the rhythms of daily West African experience into dialogue with the grand designs and narratives of traditional opera.
The figures presented in XOHANAMI also recall the basic form of Akua‘ba fertility dolls, associated with the Fante people of the Akan ethnic group in Ghana. These dolls are characterized by large, disc-like heads and slender, columnar bodies. Traditionally, Akua‘ba are used by women seeking to conceive; they are believed to help ensure the health and attractiveness of future children. For his composition, Anatsui multiplies his own constructed figures to intensify their presence, a common strategy in his practice, particularly when working at a large scale. For example, in his widely recognized bottle-cap sculptures, he achieves sublime effects through the repetitive use of elemental, generic objects. Assembled en masse, the discarded materials are transformed into broad swathes of opulent drapery. For the Opera, working with an actual curtain for the first time, Anatsui adopts a similar approach by taking found quotidian forms and multiplying them to magnificent effect, imbuing new presence and humanity in objects that would otherwise be thrown away.
In its totality, XOHANAMI encourages introspection from the audience that will pass through the theatre. By making viewers selfconscious of their own gaze, Anatsui invites them to consider their position within the formal space. Simultaneously, he introduces a visual language unfamiliar to a Viennese opera house, raising important questions about who or what can occupy such spaces, and how difference is recognized and negotiated within them. This issue of difference feels especially urgent today: Who is deemed worthy of life, culture and joy, and how do we engage with that which is unfamiliar to us?