Earth Works - A collaboration between the National Museum of African Art and Smithsonian Gardens
Description:
In a first-ever installation of land art on the National Mall, three artists have been invited to create site-specific earthworks in the historic Enid A. Haupt Garden. Strijdom van der Merwe of South Africa, El Anatsui of Ghana and Nigeria, and Ghada Amer of Egypt have each turned to the land as a canvas to explore such diverse and interrelated issues as memory, history and land use; spirituality, materiality, and environmental sustainability; and gender and the interconnections between hunger and political corruption. These works also challenge the absence of African artists from the discourse on land arts and reinforce awareness of how the earth works, as a medium and as a message.
