I’m a big fan of Yinka Shonibare and am really really excited to see the exhibition that opens today. Some of the pieces are a bit more graphic than the one above but the victorian costumes made of Dutch wax prints are totally worth seeing. Apparently when Shonibare showed up for the official preview, he arrived with two friends in victorian drag. See here.
From the BK Museum website…
June 26–September 20, 2009
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th FloorPeriod Rooms, 4th Floor
Robert E. Blum Gallery, 1st FloorThis exhibition is a major midcareer survey of work by the UK-based Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE. Shonibare’s artwork explores contemporary African identity and its relationship to European colonialism through painting, sculpture, installation, and moving image. Shonibare is best known for his work with visual symbols, especially the richly patterned Dutch wax fabric produced in Europe for a West African market that he uses in a wide range of applications. His tableaux of headless mannequins costumed in this fabric evoke themes of history and its legacy for future generations. Through these works he explores the complex web of interactions, both economic and racial, that reveal inequalities between the dominant and colonized cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa. A site-specific installation created for this presentation titled Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play will be on view in several of the Museum’s period rooms.
Another site-specific installation, Party Time—Re-Imagine America: A Centennial Commission by Yinka Shonibare MBE, will be on view at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, from July 1, 2009, to January 3, 2010, in the dining room of the museum’s 1885 Ballantine House.
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