The Museum of Art Pudong unveils the first stop of El Anatsui’s largest installation, intertwining history, migration, and material in a transformative three-act exhibition.
Courtesy of Museum of Art Pudong (MAP)
‘El Anatsui: After the Red Moon’ embarks upon its inaugural global tour commencing at the Museum of Art Pudong (MAP), Shanghai. This exhibition is one of MAP’s latest collaborative projects with Tate. Staged as a monumental installation in three acts, the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui’s cascading metal hangings transform MAP’s most unique exhibition space, Hall X, and occupy the Entrance Hall for the first time. This exhibition was conceived and commissioned as the Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon for Tate Modern, London in 2023–2024.
As one of the most influential artists today, El Anatsui was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. El Anatsui: After the Red Moon constitutes the largest installation-based exhibition MAP has held. Thousands of repurposed liquor bottle tops and metal fragments have been crumpled, crushed, and connected by hand with copper wire into unique abstract compositions that are flexible and adaptable to change, creating a sublime visual effect. These undulating and metamorphosing forms, the artist’s largest work thus far, flow through MAP’s vast interior spaces, reflecting on the expanse of human history and the elemental power of the natural world.
Audiences are invited to embark on a journey of movement and interaction through the free-flowing hangings, which open up different ways of looking. Revealing the poetic possibilities of his materials, Anatsui explores the entangled relationships and geographies that bind us together. Each sculpture refers to Anatsui’s interest in the movement and migration of goods and people during the transatlantic slave trade.
The three acts featured in ‘El Anatsui: After the Red Moon’ are, respectively, Act I: The Waves, Act II: The World, and Act III: The Wall. The first hanging, titled The Waves, was specially redesigned in a site-specific response to MAP’s waterfront architecture and its location at the graceful bend of the Huangpu River. In response to bustling port cultures, this newly conceived iteration is inspired by the seafaring journey Anatsui’s materials have taken, from Ghana to the UK and now to China. The second sculpture, The World, comprises many individual layers that evoke human figures suspended in a restless state. The ethereal appearance of these figures is achieved using thin bottle-top seals wired together to create a net-like material.
When viewed from a particular vantage point on the second floor, these scattered shapes come together into a single circular form of the Earth. In Anatsui’s final hanging, The Wall, a monumental black sheet of woven metal cloth stretches from floor to ceiling. At its base, pools of bottle tops rise from the ground in the form of crashing waves and rocky peaks. Behind its black surface, a delicate structure of shimmering silver is revealed, covered in a mosaic of multi-coloured pieces. This combination of lines and waves, blackness and technicolour, echoes the collision of global cultures and hybrid identities that Anatsui invites us to consider throughout his work.
Viewing all three hangings together from afar reveals a landscape of symbols: the moon, the sail, the wave, the Earth, and the wall. Up close, the logos on the bottle tops speak of the material’s social histories, referencing a present-day industry built on colonial trade routes. The past and present of Africa and its diasporas converge into symphonic sculptural forms that hang in the air and appear to float across space. Through the poetic use of material as metaphor, ‘El Anatsui: After the Red Moon’ explores elemental forces interwoven with human histories of power, dispersion, and survival. Furthermore, the exhibition is accompanied by a Soundscape composed by Ghanaian-British sound artist Peter Adjaye. The series of immersive soundscapes can be experienced by scanning the QR code on-site at MAP.
‘El Anatsui: After the Red Moon’ is produced by Lujiazui Development (Group) Co., Ltd and co-organised by MAP and Tate. This exhibition was initially conceived and commissioned as the Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon for Tate Modern, London 2023–2024, where it was curated by Osei Bonsu, Curator, International Art and Dina Akhmadeeva, Assistant Curator, International Art. ‘El Anatsui: After the Red Moon’ is part of a global tour organised by Tate Gallery and is managed by Katherine Finerty, Project Curator, and Hannah Cassens Marshall, Exhibitions Assistant, Tate International Partnerships.
The exhibition is on view until October 7, 2025. For more information, please visit the Museum of Art Pudong.
