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Tate Modern Exhibition

Hyundai Commission El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon

10 October 2023 – 14 April 2024

Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon, Installation View, Photo ©Tate (Joe Humphrys)

El Anatsui has created a monumental new artwork for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall

El Anatsui’s Behind the Red Moon is a monumental sculptural installation made of thousands of metal bottle tops and fragments. Crumpling, crushing, and stitching them into different compositions, large panels are pieced together to form massive abstract fields of colour, shape and line. The commission builds on Anatsui’s interest in histories of encounter and the migration of goods and people during the transatlantic slave trade. Sourced in Nigeria, the liquor bottle tops used in this commission form part of a present-day industry built on colonial trade routes.  

Behind the Red Moon is staged as an artwork in three acts. Visitors are invited to embark on a journey of movement and interaction through the hangings, a dance between bodies and sculptures.

Viewing the hangings from afar, a landscape of symbols is revealed: the moon, the sail, the wave, the earth, and the wall. Up close, the bottle tops’ logos speak to the material’s social lives as commodities of a global industry built on colonial trade routes. Together, the past and present of Africa and Europe merge into sculptural forms that hang in the air and appear to float across the space. The hangings embody Anatsui’s idea of the ‘non-fixed form’, and are part of his highly experimental approach to sculpture.

Anatsui engages with the poetic possibilities of his materials. ‘Each material has its properties, physical and even spiritual,’ he explains. Behind the Red Moon explores elemental forces interwoven with human histories of power, oppression, dispersion and survival.

Find out more about El Anatsui’s commission with our exhibition guide.

All Tate Modern entrances are step-free. You can enter via the Turbine Hall and into the Natalie Bell Building on Holland Street, or into the Blavatnik Building on Sumner Street.

There are lifts to every floor of the Blavatnik and Natalie Bell buildings. Alternatively you can take the stairs.

  • Fully accessible toilets are located on every floor on the concourses.
  • A quiet room is available to use in the Natalie Bell Building on Level 4.
  • Ear defenders can be borrowed from the Ticket desks.

To help plan your visit to Tate Modern, have a look at our visual story. It includes photographs and information about what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.

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For more information before your visit:

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Check all Tate Modern accessibility information

Tate Modern

Turbine Hall

Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Plan your visit

Dates

10 October 2023 – 14 April 2024

In partnership with

Supported by

The El Anatsui Supporters Circle

The Fuhrman Family Foundation

Amanda and John Waldron

Fayez Barakat, Hwasun Lee Barakat, Barakat Contemporary

Efie Gallery

Jack Shainman Gallery

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Sang Mo Son and Kyung Soon Lee

Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Goodman Gallery

October Gallery

Tate Americas Foundation

*****

Miracles in gleaming gold

The Guardian
****

A Turbine Hall triumph

The Times
****

As profound as it is poetic

The Telegraph

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