Locally made yet globally encompassing: Exploring El Anatsui’s installation Bleeding Takari II (2007) through Karl Marx’s critique on commodity fetishism

El Anatsui, currently one of the worlds most renowned contemporary artists, produces ornate installations of recycled materials that tell astounding yet intimate stories of African culture and his Ghanaian heritage. Made of merely bottle caps and copper wire, his 2007 work Bleeding Takari II (BTII) reflects a spiritual regeneration of the contemporary African identity. BTII consists of silver ripples with a broad strip of the patterns and colours of traditional kente cloth down the right edge of the work. The bloody wounds that stain the installations’ silver armour drips onto the floor, giving its non-figurative shape an organic quality. The presence of blood does not fundamentally possess a violent connotation, Anatsui notes. [1] He says, while blood may cause pain, it also allows for notable growth, and the word ‘Takari’ could mean anything. Thus BTII can be interpreted on the personal level of an individual soul to something large-scaled such as a country or continent. [2] The installations’ composition speaks of his personal artistic expression but also tells a much larger history of the impact foreign investment has had on the African continent. Therefore regardless of its possible readings, BTII displays the visual aftermath of change.

Understanding the role of materials in BTII, the division of artistic contribution that goes into its production, and the social impact of its exhibition, reveals the materiality that governs the majority of our social interactions. Marx’s chapter on the inherent fetishisation of commodities in his 1886 book Capital - A Critique of Political Economy expands one’s understanding of BTII as a profound display of Anatsui’s motif of our world’s interconnectedness. Marx’s review of the fetishisation of commodities argues that it is only through a demand for an object or product that it comes into existence. [3] We view products based on their physical properties. Therefore, when products are labelled as commodities, they are but a socially constructed value. [4] Its ‘fetishisation’ does not necessarily stem from the words’ understanding of a carnal feeling. Instead, he argues fetishisation stems from a commodity’s existence in a dual state between the object itself and its ability to generate social relations. [5] Thus, a constant engagement between the two states ensures its survival.

BTII explicitly displays this dual state by using recycled bottle caps and encouraging collectivity in BTII’s display from assistants to gallery curators. Furthermore, understanding the prevailing significance of BTII within the contemporary art world will reveal how the installation represents how various commodities in African society, in this case the liquor bottle, exist through the fetishisation of its product.

Marx states that we transform materials which are “furnished by Nature” into socially beneficial products. [6] BTII is made up of “more than 65 different brands of local Nigerian liquor”. [7] The installation is therefore in direct conversation with his surroundings by using a material not produced by nature. The material itself therefore presents an interaction between commodities and individuals. [8] Anatsui’s thematic expression of consumption reflects the country’s overall growing urbanisation which has led to breweries being in high demand throughout most of Nigeria. [9] The abundance of produce within BTII brings attention to this private market’s significance in the larger interpolation of players in Africa. Nigeria leads the continent in average alcohol consumption, with beer and wine only taking up a small percentage of the recorded alcohol per capita. [10]

Historically, the breweries were a significant source of production powered by colonialism and slavery [11] which means the liquor bottles exist both within a Western and African narrative. In a piece he wrote for The Guardian, Anatsui explains how the liquor bottles mimicked the transatlantic slave trade routes in the past; the bottles would travel from Africa to America to Europe and then back to Africa. [12] Therefore, BTII expresses Africa’s shifting and growing narrative as not a singular voice, but as a culmination of linked players spanning across the globe.

Anatsui brings forth the different spheres of labour that go into the creation of a commodity and exposes its systematic nature through the severe multitude of bottle caps he uses. Marx notes it is ultimately money that conceals “the social character of private labour, and the social relations between the individual producers.” [13] Value, therefore, becomes an object in itself and we become “nothing but exchange values” to one another. [14] By placing these bottle caps within his work, Anatsui imbues this product-of-labour with an intimate expression of individuality that remains inconspicuous in the trading of commodities. This is also evident in the configuration’s visual uniformity. The highly detailed presentation carries slight variations in the colours of the bloodstains and the kente cloth (Fig. 1). This convention of a realist expression celebrates the diversity of the African experience.

When exploring the fetishisation of commodities, Marx elaborates on the commodity’s physical properties, which are the materials that make the product. [15] Marx explains how a coat can sell for twice as much as the yarn used to create it, thus the material constitutes the commodity’s structure. [16] The liquor bottles and its caps resonate value not just in its creation but also its consumption so each bottle cap has a history of interaction - whether that be in a facility by factory workers or a bartender serving it to a customer. The caps’ weaving into the metallic tapestry of BTII displays a topographical-like display of a linkage between individual interactions.

The materials used to create BTII, though arguably recyclable, resists disintegration in its metallic shine. Therefore its durability stands for an unyielding statement of the material proof of commodities at play. If we contest the material exchanges between man and nature that BTII represents, one should consider Anatsui’s use of this recycled material to express circumstances where people might “have to re-use materials out of necessity, rather than as a choice.” [17] This consideration allows a new perception of the way’s material can hold self-expression. Due to the requisite attached to its origins, the utilisation of recycled materials also raises interesting questions related with regards to who actually reaps the benefits of its production.

Labour resists individualism. As Marx explains, commodities exist as representations of materials rather than individuals and its labour is reflected on the producers of the product as a social relation. As BTII suggests and as Marx writes, “the labour of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society.” [18] Therefore, relationships between individuals are generalised to “material relations between persons and social relations between things.” [19] The bottle caps signify capitalism’s domination private institutions, while Anatsui’s sculptures’ production twists Marx’s idea of what the material represents, and approaches labour from a more local level.

Marx says commodities are a product of two elements, matter and labour. [20] To expand on Marx’s example of the coat and yarn, the production of the coat as a commodity requires exchanging different labour types (picking the cotton, creating the material, sowing pieces together etc.). [21] Therefore the commodities exist “with the products of men’s hands.” [22]

An unusual amount of people are involved from the creative process of the installations’ conception to its exhibition in a gallery. The preparation of materials for BTII required different ‘stages’ of labour, the first being the actual collection of the bottle caps. When they arrive at the studio, several workers cut, fold, and organised into different groups before being sown into various shapes and finally connected together (Fig. 3). [23]As Joy Bloser reviewed, Anatsui implements the “haptic involvement” [24] of assistants in his studio in Nigeria to curators in New York, Berlin, Amsterdam and beyond in the creation of his bottle-cap works. He has been quoted wanting those who are installing his work to experiment with different folds and draping styles (Fig. 4). [25] The three dimensionalities given to his installations through the draping and the gravity of its collective weight helps accentuates creases, capturing a sense of movement. He said: “I don’t believe in artworks being fixed.” and even provides additional pieces in the event that it breaks. [26] Curator Ellen Rudolph who organised an exhibition of Anatsui’s work at the Akron Art Museum in 2012 remarked, “It’s an amazing gift that El gives the people who work on his installations.” [27] So it is not necessarily the product itself but what the product represents that captures Marx’s arguments of the fetishisation of commodities. It is what it makes us see and more importantly understand the sensations we feel towards materials versus each other.

Marx explores a commodity in his chapter based on its intended use and purpose. BTII’s interaction with multiple people seems to reflect its purpose. Therefore, through Marx’s own assessment of the purpose commodities, one should look at not only BTII’s value but the legacy it creates. So what do his installations represent and why are they so compelling? Due to commodities being “production[s] of the human brain”, the liquor bottle caps “appear as independent beings endowed with life.” [28] They are a culmination of various individuals who worked towards their creation. Marx writes “[Our use-value] is no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value.” [29] Commodities live outside of the body, but BTII reinforces that they actually transcend our physical touch and impact us in a much more personal way.

El Anatsui’s work has shifted the conversation of African contemporary art. His work has astonished us not just in its sizes but its depth and detail. For Marx, a material is measured by its usefulness to the collective and changes its form of matter with labour acquisition. Here, Anatsui has taken something that had once been used and is now discarded to create a creative expression directly tied to labour and market instances within African history. However, this significance only comes to fruition through the intricate details its fabrication. The installations’ beauty emerges from our appreciation for the delicate craftsmanship that took time and patience to make. The division of labour makes the project more collaborative, and the material itself reflects teamwork in artistic collaboration through labour division. Therefore by exploring BTII through Marx’s chapter on the fetishism in commodities, one could better understand the link stitched into the individual caps of Europe, the US and Africa. Interestingly he has said his installations, including BTII, are not explicit attacks on colonialism. He remarks, “I speak English; I don’t know if I would have spoken English if that era had not occurred.” [30]

Marx cites commodities as a creation of our imagination because it exists for the reason of us wanting or needing something from a product. [31] Therefore commodities themselves are a hedonistic creation we pursue to satisfy our desires. [32]  Our obsession with categorising our existence into tiers of value or purpose is confronted in Anatsui’s sculptures. His ultimate goal of connecting with individuals on an intimate level grounds BTII in a personal expression of a shared history. This endeavour urges contemplation and reflection, for like the installation itself, we exist amongst each other as perfectly imperfect entities.