Portrait of the artist in his ninth decade

AS A CURATOR AT THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, Eleanor Nairne is very particular about how an artwork should be placed. "I always say that you have to ask the work if it's sat comfortably," she says.

- BELINDA LUSCOMBE

"The work will tell you if it is or not." So it is that on a Tuesday in October, when the museum is closed, Nairne is having one of her most stressful workdays ever, supervising the placement of 288 delicate, diaphanous metal forms not on a wall but hanging from a 41-ft. ceiling with the aid of four rented scissor lifts, a team of installers, layout instructions in the form of a floor plan and a 3D rendering, and a lot of filigree thread.

Complicating things is that the artist is not present. This is excusable because he is 80, lives in Ghana, has had work unveiled in more than 20 exhibitions this year in cities as far-flung geographically and culturally as Shanghai, London, Dubai, and Lagos, and is quite possibly the most indemand visual artist alive today.

Rarely has a cultural figure had such transcontinental acclaim as El Anatsui, the creator of the Philadelphia museum's newly commissioned work. His success is even more unusual because he's based in Africa, which lacks the East's and the West's well-resourced mechanisms for promulgating their creations. But Anatsui often talks about his art in terms of the "nonfixed form," a reference to both the literal malleability of his monumental works and their adaptability to the space-and culture-in which they are placed. His art is as resonant in Singapore as it is in Switzerland.

Anatsui's most famous artworks, colossal wall hangings made of linked-up tiny pieces of metal, defy easy categorization. Cascading draperies of color and contour, they have the visual drama of paintings, the pixelation of mosaics, the complexity of weaving, the curves of sculpture, and the grandeur of architecture. "They don't quite look like anything that people have seen before," says Nairne. "His work feels so unusual and dynamic as a material experiment."