Yinka Shonibare

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Yinka Shonibare, MBE (born 1962) is a contemporary artist living in Britain.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Yinka Shonibare was born in London to Nigerian parents. At the age of three they moved to Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria, where he grew up. He spoke Yoruba at home, but only English at his exclusive private school. His father was a successful lawyer, and summers were spent at their Battersea home in London. When Shonibare was 16, he was sent to board in England for his final two years of school education.

Shonibare has called himself "truly bicultural".[1]

At the age of 19 he decided to become an artist, against the wishes of his father. A month into his arts course he became seriously ill with a rare viral infection which attacked his spine and left him temporarily paralysed. He spent much of the next three years in physiotherapy. He is now paralysed down one side and walks with difficulty using a stick. On his CV he identifies himself as 'physically disabled'.

He uses his physical limitations creatively - for example he works on many small scale pieces when making a larger scale artwork (see Maxa). "It’s certainly affected my method," he comments. "I’ve become very good at delegating and have a number of people who facilitate my priorities."[2] He involves a professional theatre costumer to make up his dresses and professional photographers when necessary, arranging himself in poses which hide any stiffness of posture. He is the father of Kayode Shonibare-Lewis who hopes to become a computer games artist, keeping art in the family. Kayode is known as K.

Further art education:

Goldsmith's college in the 1990s was famed for being the cradle of the Young British Artists with whom Shonibare had some group exhibitions.

[edit] Work

Shonibare explores issues of race and class through a range of media that includes sculpture, painting, photography, and installation art.

A key material in Shonibare's work since 1994 are the brightly coloured 'African' fabrics (Dutch wax-printed cotton) that he buys himself from Brixton market in London.

"But actually, the fabrics are not really authentically African the way people think," says Shonibare. "They prove to have a crossbred cultural background quite of their own. And it’s the fallacy of that signification that I like. It’s the way I view culture—it’s an artificial construct." (2) Today the main exporters of 'African' fabric from Europe are based in Manchester, England and Vlisco from Helmond, the Netherlands.

He has these fabrics made up into Victorian dresses, covering sculptures of alien figures or stretched onto canvases and thickly painted over.

Sometimes, famous paintings are re-created using headless dummies with the 'Africanised' clothing instead of their original costumes, for example Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews Without Their Heads (1998), Reverend on Ice (2005) (after The Rev Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch attributed to Sir Henry Raeburn) and The Swing (after Fragonard) (2001). An added layer to the Fragonard piece is that the fabric used is printed with the 'Dior' logo (though it is obviously not real Dior fabric).

Shonibare also takes carefully posed photographs and videos recreating famous English paintings or stories from literature e.g., The Rake's Progress by Hogarth or Dorian Grey by Wilde but with himself taking centre stage as an alternative, black English Dandy. Diary of A Victorian Dandy (1998) Dorian Gray (2001)

Other works include printed ceramics, and cloth covered shoes, upholstery, walls and bowls.

He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004 for his exhibition 'Double Dutch' at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

[edit] Selected artworks/exhibitions

  • 1991 Dysfunctional Family - cuddly looking sculptures of aliens covered in fabric
  • 1994 Double Dutch - small deep squares of stretched fabric painted over, on a shocking pink wall
  • 1997 Sensation A group exhibition drawn from the personal collection of Charles Saatchi - Shonibara had two Victorian style dresses in the show in the style of Dressing Down
  • 1997 Cha Cha Cha - a pair of 1950s women's shoes, covered in fabric and encased in a perspex cube.
  • 1997 Feather Pink More squares of fabric, painted on both the front and edges, with a white background
  • 1998 Diary of A Victorian Dandy - photographs of Shonibare in group setups reminiscent of A Rake's Progress by Hogarth, commissioned for the London Underground
  • 2000 Vacation - Space suited men covered in African fabric, busy up at the ceilings by the chandeliers
  • 2001 Dorian Grey - atmospheric black and white photographs of Shonibare as Oscar Wilde's Dorian Grey
  • 2001 The Swing (after Fragonard) - a headless lifesize recreation of Fragonard's model clothed in African fabric
  • 2001 Henry James and Hendrik C. Andersen - two clothed headless lifesize models of the writer James and the sculptor Andersen, symbolising their friendship and commissioned by The British School at Rome
  • 2001 The Three Graces Three headless lifesize models of women of varying proportions, in Victorian dress made from African fabric
  • 2002 Gallantry and Criminal Conversation - an installation including a suspended coach, wooden chests and 18 headless 18th century figures engaged in copulation
  • 2003 Maxa Maxa detail - circles of partially painted fabric on a deep blue wall
  • 2004 Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) - his first film, showing the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden through dance
  • 2005 Lady on Unicycle - a headless Victorian lady in knickerbockers joyously caught frozen mid-cycle

His first solo exhibition was in 1997 at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London. He has an upcoming solo exhibition at James Cohan Gallery in March 2008.

[edit] Turner Prize nomination in 2004

Shonibare was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2004 for his Double Dutch exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam and for his solo show at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. In 2009

Of the four nominees, he seemed to be the most popular with the general public that year. Out of visitors voting on a BBC website poll, 64% said that his work was their favourite.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Quote from Turner Prize interview
  2. ^ Quote from interview by Pernilla Holmes, Art News Online, October 2002

[edit] External links

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Young British Artists
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Related artists
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See also