West African Art in Los Angeles: El Anatsui: Gawu

While I was at the conference at UCLA, I took a break to see what they had at the Fowler Museum, UCLA's little cultural museum. This museum, though small (usually only 4 small exhibits) can sometims have real gems. One time they had the Treasures of Sipan, the only American museum to have this spectacular exhibit of Peruvian artifacts. It was compared to the Treasures of Tutankhamen...and rightly so.

Nothing that spectacular is on display right now at the Fowler, but there is one exhibit that we quite loved. It was an exhibit of art by West African artist El Anatsui using, quite simply, garbage to make beautiful tapestry-like pieces.

(image from Artifacts Net)

For more images, take the photo tour from the Fowler Museum website (if the link works! If not go to their website through the link above).

His stuff is amazing and is made from things like the bits of metal that are used to seal liquor bottles (which are non-recyclable, so El Anatsui recycles them into art!).

For anyone who will be near UCLA in July or August, I highly recommend checking this exhibit out. The other exhibit we liked, photographs of mud architecture from Mali and surrounding areas (the architecture that made Timbuktu so spectacular at one time) has ended.

Here is the info on the El Anatsui show from the Fowler Museum website:

El Anatsui: Gawu
to August 26, 2007

Africa's most influential artists, recently named by Britain's The Independent as one of the fifty greatest cultural figures shaping the continent. His work dwells on the continent's history, drawing simultaneously on traditional African idioms and contemporary western art. This exhibition includes eight large-scale works that make use of large quantities of discarded everyday objects such as bottle tops, flattened food tins, and cassava graters woven together to create magnificent sculptural 'tapestries,' which recall the Ghanaian tradition of weaving kente cloth.

Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
Thursday until 8 p.m.

Closed:
Monday and Tuesday, and major holidays.

Admission is FREE

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Words to live by

One thing that I've found unsettling, though, in listening to coverage about the protests thusfar, is this "good immigrant/bad immigrant" rhetoric that's present in what some people are saying, protesters and organizers alike. This morning, while listening to NPR, I heard one woman speak about how Latino immigrants aren't doing anything to harm this country, that they "love America" and just want to become good, hard-working Americans. Then I heard one organizer, speaking at one of the rallies, say something like this: "Nineteen people hijacked planes and participated in the 9/11 attacks, and not one of them were named Gonzales, Rodriguez, or Santiago. But you can bet that many of the people dying serving their country in Iraq are named Gonzales, Rodriguez, and Santiago" so on and so forth.

I understand that much of this is in response to the whole immigration debate getting wrapped up in worries about "national security" - how the specter of terrorism seems to make allowances for all manner of discrimination, racism and xenophobia, and how countless immigrants are nonsensically made to suffer because of it. However, it definitely seems like a very bad, very problematic move to buy into this sort of dichotomy that pits "good" immigrants or "good" brown folks (here, Latinos) against "bad" ones (apparently people of Arab or Middle Eastern descent - because, you know, the actions of individuals become the responsibility, the fault, the burden of their entire race and religion.) Latinos, like all other immigrants to the United States, deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and are entitled to certain rights and protections because they are human beings, not because they're good, flag-waving*, American-loving immigrants. No one is illegal, no matter whether your name is Juan or Mohammed, Gonzales or Atta.

— AngryBrownButch | no one is illegal