El

Anatsui’s

Lessons

from

the

Past:

A

Return

to

Wood

El Anatsui’s return to wooden sculpture feels almost inevitable. His new pieces in Go Back and Pick — a two-part exhibition spanning October Gallery and Goodman Gallery — revisit his early experiments with wood from the 1970s, reopening a dialogue with the Ghanaian principle of Sankofa: that one must return to the past in order to move forward.