One of the most prominent and versatile artists working in the UK today, Yinka Shonibare CBE (London, UK, 1962) makes work that scrutinizes the legacy of Western colonialism and its lingering traces. The British-Nigerian artist rose to renown with installations featuring headless life-sized figures in historic costumes tailored out of colorful batik-dyed fabrics. A self-described “postcolonial hybrid,” Shonibare zooms in on episodes from art and history, primarily from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, employing subversive creative strategies to visualize them in tragicomic scenes of human activity. Shonibare’s multimedia oeuvre probes constructions of race, class, and national and cultural identities through a sustained study of the historic interdependencies between Africa and Europe. The overview exhibition gathers ca. sixty works from the past thirty years.
Yinka Shonibare is laureate of the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award 2021.
Supported by the British Council.
An extensive publication (DE/EN) was published in conjunction with the exhibition. You can order it HERE online.