El Anatsui (born c. 1944, Volta Region, Gold Coast [Now Ghana]) is an internationally revered and multi-award winning Ghanaian artist. He is known for his large-scale sculptures which are composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of metal such as, cassava graters and liquor bottle tops, transforming simple materials into complex assemblages that create a distinctive visual impact; this visual impact often confronts the legacy of colonialism within Africa and the environmental response to consumption and waste. His sculptures have been collected by major international museums, including the British Museum, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, Abu Dhabi’s Guggenheim and the museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. In 2015 El Anatsui was awarded the Venice Biennale art exhibition’s Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement.