Yinka Shonibare, MBE: Fabric-Ation
Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2013
Born London, United Kingdom 1962
Lives and works in London
Yinka Shonibare, CBE is a British-Nigerian contemporary artist currently living and working in London. Shonibare’s practice is concerned primarily with articulating experiences of European colonialism and thinking through postcolonial theory via his hallmark medium — brightly coloured ‘African’ batik fabric. Through the cloth, which he sources from London, Shonibare navigates an intricate and subversive history involving Indonesian design, Dutch mass-production, colonial trade routes and African selfhood and independence.
Through inserting the kaleidoscopic colours into a variety of artistic methods and media, Shonibare explores cultural dynamism within the contemporary context of globalisation and increasingly complex networks of international power, dependency, trade and migration and its consequences for racial, national and economic identities.
Selected recent exhibitions include Prejudice at Home: A Parlour, a Library, and a Room, James Cohan, New York (2017); Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (2016); Recreating the Pastoral, VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow (2016); and Yinka Shonibare MBE, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2016).