British Museum - Changes in Art in the 20th Century

Name: 'Man's Cloth' (Kente Cloth)

made using recycled foil bottle neck wrappers by El Anatsui, Ghana, 2001.

Symbolises the erosion of traditional cultural art forms and memories. The bottle wrappers represent this erosion by modern consumerism. The cloth that is intertwined within it paradoxically represents the 'fragility and the dynamism and strenght of tradition'.


Name: 'Complex Structure'

materials used are wood, iron, paint - made by the Igbo people of Nigeria in 1954.

comprised of seperately made elements - marked change from past art sculptures which were often a single piece made from one block of raw material - commonly wood. Evidence of artistic experimentation and development. Represents images of power, horsemen, firearms and imported goods. It thus captures the igbo encounters with modernity and in particular, colonists.