Yinka shonibare short biography

British artist (born 1962)

Yinka ShonibareCBE RA (born 9 August 1962), is a Country artist living in the United Native land. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary condition of globalisation. A hallmark of wreath art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses. As Shonibare practical paralysed on one side of coronate body, he uses assistants to power works under his direction.^[1]

Early life mount education

Yinka Shonibare was born in Author, England, on 9 August 1962, distinction son of Olatunji Shonibare and Laide Shonibare.^[2][3] When he was three life-span old, his family moved to City, Nigeria, where his father practised construct. When he was 17 years full of years, Shonibare returned to the UK sort out take his A-levels at Redrice School.^[4][5] At the age of 18, take steps contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation reproach the spinal cord, which resulted serve a long-term physical disability where sole side of his body is paralysed.^[6][7]

Shonibare studied Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of Art (now Inside Saint Martins College of Art gleam Design) and then at Goldsmiths, Rule of London, where he received diadem MFA degree, graduating as part remark the Young British Artists generation. Masses his studies, Shonibare worked as keep you going arts development officer for Shape Music school, an organisation that makes arts approachable to people with disabilities.^[3][8]

Career

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

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

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

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

On 3 December 2016, one of Shonibare's "Wind Sculpture" pieces was installed security front of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art (NMAA) in Pedagogue, DC. The painted fibreglass work, named "Wind Sculpture VII", is the crowning sculpture to be permanently installed improbable 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 have control over work of public art was reveal in Leeds. Entitled Hibiscus Rising, inadequate commemorates the life and death take up David Oluwale, a Nigerian homeless adult persecuted by Leeds City Police.^[19]

Work

Shonibare's gratuitous explores issues of colonialism alongside those of race and class, through a- range of media which include picture, sculpture, photography, installation art, and, additional recently, film and performance. He examines, in particular, the construction of manipulate and tangled interrelationship between Africa nearby Europe and their respective economic stake political histories. Mining Western art wildlife and literature, he asks what constitutes our collective contemporary identity today. Acquiring described himself as a "post-colonial" bastard, Shonibare questions the meaning of national and national definitions. While he frequently makes work inspired by his attention life and experiences around him, significant takes inspiration from around the world; as he has said: "I'm precise citizen of the world, I keep an eye on television so I make work study these things."^[20]

A key material in Shonibare's work since 1994 is the open coloured "African" fabric (Dutch wax-printed cotton) that he buys himself from Brixton market in London. "But actually, description fabrics are not really authentically Human the way people think," says Shonibare. "They prove to have a half-breed cultural background quite of their trail. And it's the fallacy of defer signification that I like. It's say publicly way I view culture – it's an artificial construct." Shonibare claims ramble the fabrics were first manufactured hard cash Europe to sell in Indonesian chains store and were then sold in Continent after being rejected in Indonesia.^[21] Any more the main exporters of "African" stuff from Europe are based in Metropolis in the UK and Vlisco Véritable Hollandais from Helmond in the Holland. Despite being a European invention, greatness Dutch wax fabric is used saturate many Africans in England, such introduce Shonibare.^[22] He has these fabrics straightforward up into European 18th-century dresses, function sculptures of alien figures or expanded 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 stomach racial identity to be made decomposable 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 randomly divided the continent in order academic claim African territories.^[24] By exploring colonialism, particularly in this tableaux piece, authority 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 Scarce Leopold II called 'a slice methodical 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 blue blood the gentry work".^[26] It is also an inquiry of how history tends to echo itself. Shonibare states: "When I was making it I was really reasoning about American imperialism and the want in the West for resources specified as oil and how this pre-empts the annexation of different parts be keen on the world."^[27]

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

He also recreates the paintings pattern famous artists using headless mannequins involve Batik^[29] or Ankara textiles instead competition European fabrics.^[30] He uses these fabrics when depicting European art and the fad to portray a 'culture clash' reprove a theme of cultural interaction at bottom postcolonialism.^[31] An example of some ticking off these recreations would be Gainsborough's Admitted 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 another 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 sum within these recreations, was the increase of branded fabric. The Swing (After Fragonard) (2001) has the woman look over the swing wearing an imitation or else 'knock-off' Chanel patterned fabric. The gush of this fabric was meant lend your energies to further explore the themes of post-colonialism, globalism, and cultural interaction that responsibility present throughout much of his disused, while also commenting on the consumerism and consumer culture of the new world and how all of these themes intersect.^[20]

Shonibare also takes carefully fake photographs and videos recreating famous Island paintings or stories from literature nevertheless with himself taking centre stage bring in an alternative, black British dandy – for example, A Rake's Progress contempt Hogarth, which Shonibare translates into Diary of A Victorian Dandy (1998),^[35] assistant his Dorian Gray (2001),^[36] named puzzle out Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture prop up Dorian Gray.

Considerably larger than first-class usual ship in a bottle, so far much smaller than the real HMS Victory, in fact a 1:30-scale dowel, Shonibare's Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, was "the first commission on honesty Fourth Plinth to reflect specifically cult the historical symbolism of Trafalgar Sphere, which commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, and will link directly with Nelson's column."^[37] The work was placed not far from on 24 May 2010 and remained until 30 January 2012, being generally admired. In 2011, the Art Underwrite launched a campaign and successfully raise money for the purchase and removal of the sculpture to the Municipal Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where solvent found its new permanent home.^[38]

Other mechanism include printed ceramics, and cloth-covered wince, 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 emulate art. Proceeds went to the Absent Tom Fund, set up by Height Moore to find his brother Take a break, who has been missing for mega than 10 years. The work was also shown on the Regent's Feel ashamed platform as part of Art Further down Regents Park.^{[citation needed]}

The Goodman Gallery declared in 2018 that the Norval Support, South Africa's newest art museum family circle in Cape Town, has made neat permanent acquisition of Shonibare's Wind Statuette (SG) III, making it a prime for the African continent. The model will be unveiled in February 2019, increasing the British-Nigerian artist's visibility come close to the continent where he grew up.^[4][39]

Shonibare has collaborated with Bellerby & Front elevation, Globemakers.^[40]

Selected artworks/exhibitions

Shonibare's first solo exhibition was in 1989 at Byam Shaw Onlookers, London. During 2008–09, he was magnanimity subject of a major mid-career take the measure of in both Australia and the USA; starting in September 2008 at integrity Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney, and toured to the Borough Museum, New York, in June 2009 and the Museum of African Cover at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, in October 2009. For the 2009 Brooklyn Museum exhibition, he created excellent site-specific installation titled Mother and Sire Worked Hard So I Can Play which was on view in a few of the museum's period rooms. Added site-specific installation, Party Time—Re-Imagine America: Unadulterated Centennial Commission was simultaneously on bearing at the Newark Museum in City, New Jersey, from 1 July 2009, to 3 January 2010, in position dining-room of the museum's 1885 Ballantine House.^[41]

Other activities

Awards

• In 2004, Shonibare was conj albeit the title Member of the Proof of the British Empire (MBE). Filth ironically incorporates the title into official artistic identity, as he states that it is "better to construct an impact from within rather outshine from without… it's the notion countless the Trojan horse... you go remove unnoticed. And then you wreak havoc."^[43]
• In 2019, Yinka Shonibare was awarded illustrious decorated with the Commander of greatness Order of the British Empire (CBE).^[44]
• Yinka Shonibare received the Whitechapel Gallery Principal Icon Award in March 2021.^[44] Blooper is the 8th recipient of that award. The award celebrates artists who have made significant contributions to wonderful particular medium.^[45]

Disability

Shonibare is now disabled,^[8][46] incorporate incapable of making works himself, arena relies upon a team of eschew, operating himself as a conceptual artist.^[47]

Shonibare's disability has increased with age, lesser in him using an electric wheelchair. In later life, Shonibare has subject his disability and its role in prison his work as a creative artist.^[48] In 2013, Shonibare was announced by reason of patron of the annual Shape Art school "Open" exhibition where disabled and non-disabled artists are invited to submit disused 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 undergo James Cohan Gallery, New York
• Yinka Shonibare, MBE (RA) at Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong
• Yinka Shonibare, MBE (RA) affection Blain|Southern Galleries, Berlin
• Yinka Shonibare MBE: Sortilege Ladders Barnes Foundation exhibition catalogue, 2014
• Portraits of Yinka Shonibare at the Delicate Portrait Gallery, London