Yinka Shonibare (1962)
While doing his studies at the Art Academy in London in the mid-eighties, Yinka Shonibare (London, 1962) was given the advice to make “authentic African art”. Cultural identity has become a central theme in his work, but not in the way his professor of the time meant. In Shonibare’s vision, “cultural identity” is a fictive concept. His installations and staged photo works playfully depict how cultures blend with each other and are continually in flux. Shonibare himself can, in fact, be seen as the embodiment of this blending of cultures. Born in England, with an African background, he grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and since 1984 has been working as an artist in London.
He is perhaps best known for his theatrical installations with life-sized mannequins dressed in historical costumes and decorated with all manner of props, reminiscent of the tableaux-vivants of the nineteenth century. But instead of live models frozen in pose, Shonibare uses lifeless, and headless, mannequins. More than just making his figures anonymous, this forces the viewer to divine the figures’ moods. They are often depicted in an eighteenth or nineteenth-century setting: the age in which power, dominance, and submission were defined by colonialism. In one installation, Shonibare presents a group of well-to-do men dividing up the African continent amongst themselves. In others, he shows the excesses of the wealth acquired in this way.
What is striking and surprising about the artist’s work is the African-looking fabrics used to make the European-style dress. Shonibare uses these brightly coloured fabrics in all his work. For him, they are the perfect symbol of cultural blending. These fabrics have long been produced for the African market in Manchester, England, as well as here in the Netherlands, in Helmond. Their origin goes back to the Dutch colonial history. They were first produced here in the mid-nineteenth century as imitation batiks (a cheaper alternative to the real thing).
Shonibare is a leading exponent of the post-colonialism movement. Unlike the work of the previous generation of black artists, who used their work as a form of protest, Shonibare’s work is dominated by pleasure and fun. Irony goes hand in hand with a sense of spectacle. His works are a political statement as much as they are an ode to the beauty of art.
