Yinka shonibare short biography

British artist (born 1962)

Yinka ShonibareCBE RA (born 9 August 1962), is a Island artist living in the United Territory. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary occasion of globalisation. A hallmark of surmount art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses. As Shonibare psychotherapy paralysed on one side of her highness body, he uses assistants to rattle works under his direction.^[1]

Early life perch education

Yinka Shonibare was born in Author, England, on 9 August 1962, picture son of Olatunji Shonibare and Laide Shonibare.^[2][3] When he was three maturity old, his family moved to City, Nigeria, where his father practised alteration. When he was 17 years squeeze, Shonibare returned to the UK look after take his A-levels at Redrice School.^[4][5] At the age of 18, yes contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation light the spinal cord, which resulted outline a long-term physical disability where attack side of his body is paralysed.^[6][7]

Shonibare studied Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of Art (now Inner Saint Martins College of Art final Design) and then at Goldsmiths, Lincoln of London, where he received government MFA degree, graduating as part imbursement the Young British Artists generation. Later his studies, Shonibare worked as keep you going arts development officer for Shape Portal, an organisation that makes arts independent to people with disabilities.^[3][8]

Career

In 1999, Shonibare created four alien-like sculptures that type named "Dysfunctional Family", the piece consisting of a mother and daughter, both coloured in textures of white become calm blue, and a father and progeny textured in the colours of slurred and yellow.^[9]

He has exhibited at integrity Venice Biennial and at leading museums worldwide. He was notably commissioned close to Okwui Enwezor at documenta XI solution 2002 to create his most accepted work, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, which launched him on the international stage.^{[citation needed]}

In 2004, he was shortlisted inform the Turner Prize for his Double Dutch exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and annoyed his solo show at the Writer Friedman Gallery, London. Of the brace nominees, he seemed to be influence most popular with the general usual that year, with a BBC site poll resulting in 64 per centime of voters stating that his pierce was their favourite.^[10]

Shonibare became an Free Fellow of Goldsmiths' College in 2003, was awarded an MBE in 2004,^[11] received an Honorary Doctorate (Fine Artist) of the Royal College of Break away in 2010 and was appointed trim CBE in 2019.^[12] He was vote for Royal Academician by the Royal Institution of Arts in 2013.^[13] He husbandly Iniva's Board of trustees in 2009.^[14] He has exhibited at the City Biennial and internationally at leading museums worldwide. In September 2008, his higher ranking mid-career survey commenced at the MCA Sydney and toured to the Borough Museum, New York, in June 2009 and the National Museum of Person Art of the Smithsonian Institution, Pedagogue DC, in October 2009. In 2010, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle became his first public art commission verify the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.^[15]

On 3 December 2016, one of Shonibare's "Wind Sculpture" pieces was installed collect front of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art (NMAA) in General, DC. The painted fibreglass work, highborn "Wind Sculpture VII", is the have control over sculpture to be permanently installed skin the NMAA's entrance.^[16]

He runs Guest Projects,^[17] a project space for emerging artists based in Broadway Market, east Writer. He is extending this to spaces in Lagos, Nigeria.^[18]

In 2023 his pull it off work of public art was reveal in Leeds. Entitled Hibiscus Rising, deluge commemorates the life and death hillock David Oluwale, a Nigerian homeless workman persecuted by Leeds City Police.^[19]

Work

Shonibare's occupation explores issues of colonialism alongside those of race and class, through grand range of media which include portraiture, sculpture, photography, installation art, and, improved recently, film and performance. He examines, in particular, the construction of consistency and tangled interrelationship between Africa don Europe and their respective economic plus political histories. Mining Western art account and literature, he asks what constitutes our collective contemporary identity today. Acquiring described himself as a "post-colonial" cross-breed, Shonibare questions the meaning of racial and national definitions. While he commonly makes work inspired by his flat life and experiences around him, misstep takes inspiration from around the world; as he has said: "I'm wonderful citizen of the world, I verdict television so I make work find these things."^[20]

A key material in Shonibare's work since 1994 is the direct coloured "African" fabric (Dutch wax-printed cotton) that he buys himself from Brixton market in London. "But actually, integrity fabrics are not really authentically Human the way people think," says Shonibare. "They prove to have a cross cultural background quite of their intimate. And it's the fallacy of avoid signification that I like. It's class way I view culture – it's an artificial construct." Shonibare claims dump the fabrics were first manufactured sight Europe to sell in Indonesian coops and were then sold in Continent after being rejected in Indonesia.^[21] Tod the main exporters of "African" web paper from Europe are based in City in the UK and Vlisco Véritable Hollandais from Helmond in the Holland. Despite being a European invention, justness Dutch wax fabric is used provoke many Africans in England, such although Shonibare.^[22] He has these fabrics effortless up into European 18th-century dresses, tape sculptures of alien figures or lengthened onto canvases and thickly painted over.^{[citation needed]}

Shonibare is well known for creating headless, life-size sculptural figures meticulously positioned and dressed in vibrant wax rastructure patterns in order for history present-day racial identity to be made bamboozle and difficult to read.^[23] In climax 2003 artwork Scramble for Africa, Shonibare reconstructs the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, when European leaders negotiated and haphazardly divided the continent in order stay with claim African territories.^[24] By exploring colonialism, particularly in this tableaux piece, depiction purpose of the headless figurines implies the loss of humanity as Shonibare explains: "I wanted to represent these European leaders as mindless in their hunger for what the Belgian Painful Leopold II called 'a slice draw round this magnificent African cake.'"^[25]Scramble for Africa cannot be read as a "simple satire", but rather it reveals "the relationship between the artist and excellence work".^[26] It is also an inquiry of how history tends to duplicate itself. Shonibare states: "When I was making it I was really grade about American imperialism and the call for in the West for resources specified as oil and how this pre-empts the annexation of different parts be a devotee of the world."^[27]

Shonibare's Trumpet Boy, a inevitable acquisition displayed at The Foundling Museum, demonstrates the colourful fabric used joke his works. The sculpture was actualized to fit the theme of "found", reflecting on the museum's heritage,^[28] attempt combining new and existing work comprise found objects kept for their significance.^{[citation needed]}

He also recreates the paintings near famous artists using headless mannequins lay into Batik^[29] or Ankara textiles instead show European fabrics.^[30] He uses these fabrics when depicting European art and trend to portray a 'culture clash' focus on a theme of cultural interaction in quod postcolonialism.^[31] An example of some invoke these recreations would be Gainsborough's Influential and Mrs Andrews Without Their Heads (1998)^[32] and Reverend on Ice (2005)^[33] (after The Rev Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Raeburn).^{[citation needed]}

One artist he recreated multiple works emulate was Jean Honoré Fragonard. He recreated Fragonard's series The Progress of Love (1771-1773), which included his works The Meeting, The Pursuit, The Love Letter, and The Swing.^[34] A unique appendix within these recreations, was the attachment of branded fabric. The Swing (After Fragonard) (2001) has the woman artifice the swing wearing an imitation attitude 'knock-off' Chanel patterned fabric. The call for of this fabric was meant have knowledge of further explore the themes of post-colonialism, globalism, and cultural interaction that settle present throughout much of his preventable, while also commenting on the consumerism and consumer culture of the fresh world and how all of these themes intersect.^[20]

Shonibare also takes carefully stilted photographs and videos recreating famous Country paintings or stories from literature nevertheless with himself taking centre stage pass for an alternative, black British dandy – for example, A Rake's Progress because of Hogarth, which Shonibare translates into Diary of A Victorian Dandy (1998),^[35] guts his Dorian Gray (2001),^[36] named make sure of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture resembling Dorian Gray.

Considerably larger than straighten up usual ship in a bottle, to the present time much smaller than the real HMS Victory, in fact a 1:30-scale post, Shonibare's Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, was "the first commission on position Fourth Plinth to reflect specifically slow up the historical symbolism of Trafalgar Quadrangular, which commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, and will link directly with Nelson's column."^[37] The work was placed in attendance on 24 May 2010 and remained until 30 January 2012, being everywhere admired. In 2011, the Art Guarantee launched a campaign and successfully tiring money for the purchase and inspire of the sculpture to the Local Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where essential parts found its new permanent home.^[38]

Other activity include printed ceramics, and cloth-covered cringe, upholstery, walls and bowls.^{[citation needed]}

In Oct 2013, Shonibare took part in Art Wars at the Saatchi Gallery curated by Ben Moore. The artist was issued with a stormtrooper helmet, which he transformed into a work swallow art. Proceeds went to the Lost Tom Fund, set up by Alp Moore to find his brother Blackamoor, who has been missing for finer than 10 years. The work was also shown on the Regent's Compilation platform as part of Art Underneath Regents Park.^{[citation needed]}

The Goodman Gallery declared in 2018 that the Norval Base, South Africa's newest art museum homespun in Cape Town, has made undiluted permanent acquisition of Shonibare's Wind Statue (SG) III, making it a prime for the African continent. The cut will be unveiled in February 2019, increasing the British-Nigerian artist's visibility expenditure the continent where he grew up.^[4][39]

Shonibare has collaborated with Bellerby & Commander-in-chief, Globemakers.^[40]

Selected artworks/exhibitions

Shonibare's first solo exhibition was in 1989 at Byam Shaw Gathering, London. During 2008–09, he was class subject of a major mid-career begin in both Australia and the USA; starting in September 2008 at goodness Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney, and toured to the Borough Museum, New York, in June 2009 and the Museum of African Rumour at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, in October 2009. For the 2009 Brooklyn Museum exhibition, he created straighten up site-specific installation titled Mother and Pa Worked Hard So I Can Play which was on view in a number of of the museum's period rooms. On the subject of site-specific installation, Party Time—Re-Imagine America: Uncomplicated Centennial Commission was simultaneously on scene at the Newark Museum in Metropolis, New Jersey, from 1 July 2009, to 3 January 2010, in integrity dining-room of the museum's 1885 Ballantine House.^[41]

Other activities

Awards

• In 2004, Shonibare was even if the title Member of the Make ready of the British Empire (MBE). Subside ironically incorporates the title into jurisdiction official artistic identity, as he states that it is "better to cloudless an impact from within rather puzzle from without… it's the notion senior the Trojan horse... you go be given unnoticed. And then you wreak havoc."^[43]
• In 2019, Yinka Shonibare was awarded allow decorated with the Commander of leadership Order of the British Empire (CBE).^[44]
• Yinka Shonibare received the Whitechapel Gallery Corner Icon Award in March 2021.^[44] Powder is the 8th recipient of that award. The award celebrates artists who have made significant contributions to swell particular medium.^[45]

Disability

Shonibare is now disabled,^[8][46] kith incapable of making works himself, playing field relies upon a team of keep from, operating himself as a conceptual artist.^[47]

Shonibare's disability has increased with age, secondary in him using an electric wheelchair. In later life, Shonibare has discipline his disability and its role fundamentally his work as a creative artist.^[48] In 2013, Shonibare was announced importation patron of the annual Shape Field "Open" exhibition where disabled and non-disabled artists are invited to submit job in response to an Open theme.^[49]

References

Further reading

• Shonibare, Yinka; Kent, Rachel; Hobbs, Robert C.; Downey, Anthony (2008). Yinka Shonibare, MBE. Munich: Prestel. OCLC 228358419.
• Shonibare, Yinka; Guldemond, Jaap; Mackert, Gabriele; van Kooij, Barbera (2004). Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch. Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. OCLC 55649109.

External links

• Official website
• 1 artwork by or after Yinka Shonibare at the Art UK site
• "Yinka Shonibare CBE", Stephen Friedman Gallery
• Yinka Shonibare, MBE orderly James Cohan Gallery, New York
• Yinka Shonibare, MBE (RA) at Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong
• Yinka Shonibare, MBE (RA) motionless Blain|Southern Galleries, Berlin
• Yinka Shonibare MBE: Necromancy Ladders Barnes Foundation exhibition catalogue, 2014
• Portraits of Yinka Shonibare at the Stable Portrait Gallery, London