Yinka Shonibare

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1999

New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Yinka Shonibare, January - March 2002

Though born in London, in 1965 Yinka Shonibare and his family moved to the former British ‘Colony and Protectorate’ of Nigeria five years after the country declared its independence from the United Kingdom. Over the next twenty years, he would witness the fledgling republic suffer bloody coups, civil wars and ethnic massacres, tumultuously trying to establish a regional identity.  Out of this chaotic miasma, the artist returned to the United Kingdom, enrolling in London’s Byam Shaw school of art. Drawing on his background of post-colonial disorder, Shonibare developed an artistic language of remarkable beauty, indomitable humor and universal clarity. 

Shonibare’s art compels us to examine the ways in which our social, cultural, and political institutions have carved our histories and constructed our identities. His early paintings, such as those from the ‘Argos’ series, expose aspects of cultural duplicity. Moreover, in photographic series such as Diary of a Victorian Dandy, 1998 our pre-conceived concepts of 19^th century British ‘dandyism’ are construed so as to confront contemporary racial stereotypes. Yet, the most celebrated works in Shonibare’s oeuvre are the sculptures and installations which incorporate colorful and complex Batik textiles. Frequently mis-identified as African in origin (many are “Real Dutch Wax” from Amsterdam), these fabrics reveal false notions of cultural authenticity via their fine tailoring, ostensible ethnicity and evocative poses. 

Five Under Garments and Much More is an important and early work by the artist incorporating his trademark fabric constructions.  Five elegantly haunting figures hover in the air simultaneously and paradoxically reminiscent of shop-window mannequins or silent spectators, depending on which side of the glass you are on. Yet, their disquieting air is irrepressibly captivating, as if their very presence signifies an undeniable truth.  As Janice Cheddie notes, “By removing the physical body and presenting the viewer with a shell… Shonibare suggest[s] to the viewer that the social meaning of the body is constructed within a system of visual signification rather than on the material body itself. In drawing our attention to the human body as something, which is read and socially constructed, [he] disrupts commonsense notions concerning cultural and sexual difference.” (Janice Cheddie, “The Will to Adorn”, The Diversity Art Forum, http://www.uel.ac.uk/aavaa/will.html)