Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Yinka Shonibare

Born in England in 1962 and raised in Nigeria, Yinka Shonibare currently lives and works in London, where he gained international attention by exploring issues of race, culture and class through a range of media including sculpture, painting , photography and installation art. The adoption of a rich and complex subject, unconventional approach, one can say that they are some of the features of this artist as well as an interest in bridging the gap between design, ethnography and contemporary art. The humor mixed with irony to addressing historical, political and social. His works, simultaneously innocent and subversive, are positioned in front of a number of cultural and historical re-meaning conventional concepts. A playful, colorful, sometimes ostentatious, almost traditional design but have some disturbing or strange (eg headless bodies). In this case present a series of sculptures, mostly used mannequins, clothing that appeals to England "noble" of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century but with African design patterns.

 
Gallantry and Criminal Conversation 2002
 
Hopscotch, 2000, wax printed cotton textile and wooden base, figures: 43 x 20 x 20 inches each, Plinth: 5 x 75 x 54 7.8 inches.
 
How to blow up two heads at once? (Ladies), 2006 Two mannequins, two guns, Dutch wax printed cotton textiles, shoes, leather riding boots, plinth.
   
Scramble for Africa, (2003). Work that in my opinion has a didactic value unmatched when addressing the issue of imperialism. These characters represent the Scramble for Africa after the Berlin Conference in late nineteenth century. European Hierarchs headless, but dressed in African designs, are the true representation of a culture that is imposed, appropriates another. A strange game of contradictory metaphors dominated and dominating.

Work Citied: http://depasoarte.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archive.html 

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