Alexi Worth's (MFA Senior Critic) profile on W. African artist published in the NYT Style Magazine, Feb. 22, 2009

El Anatsui, Hover, 2005

A Thousand Bottles. . . (excerpt follows)
By Alexi Worth

"MEET EL ANATSUI, THE AFRICAN ARTIST WHO USES ‘EMPTIES’ TO REINVENT SCULPTURE.

ONE DAY 10 YEARS AGO in the countryside of southern Nigeria,
a slim middle-aged man drove past a bag of garbage. Garbage is not an unusual sight in West Africa; village roads are often lined with a parallel hillock of trash — dusty bottles, spoiled food, tin cans, car parts — out of which small trees sometimes grow. But this solitary bag looked promising. It was a quiet, sunny late afternoon in the dry season. The man stopped the car and walked over to look inside. A decade later, the contents of that bag have toured the world from Wales to Arizona and come to rest, transformed but recognizable, in some of the world’s most famous museums..."

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/02/22/style/t/index.html#pageName=22nigeria