Biography, Selected Exhibitions, Artworks and Selected Press
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA | Dossier 2024
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
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Biography
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (b. London, UK, 1962) moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three. He returned to the UK to study Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London and Goldsmiths College, London, where he received his Masters in Fine Art.
In 2023, to mark Sharjah Biennial’s 30th anniversary Shonibare was commissioned to create a series of new works for the exhibition. He also unveiled a new outdoor sculpture commissioned by the David Oluwale Memorial Association in Aire Park, Leeds as part of Leeds 2023. In 2022, Shonibare launched Guest Artists Space (G. A. S.) Foundation in Nigeria. The non-profit, which receives strategic oversight from UK-based charity Yinka Shonibare Foundation, delivers residency programmes across sites in Lagos and on a 54-acre working farm in Ijebu.
Shonibare has unveiled a number of sculptural works in recent years, including in Stockholm, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. His monumental Wind Sculptures have been displayed globally including at Norval Foundation in Cape Town (2019) and Central Park, New York (2018). Shonibare’s first public art commission, titled Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2010 and was acquired by London’s National Maritime Museum.
Recent survey exhibitions and retrospectives include Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head (2022) at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Michigan and Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg (2021). Shonibare’s 2008 mid-career survey travelled from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney to the Brooklyn Museum in New York as well as the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
Major awards include the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award 2021 and Shonibare was honoured as ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’ in 2019. Shonibare was also nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004, and in 2002, he created one of his most recognised installations, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation for Documenta XI.
Notable museum collections include Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town; Norval Foundation, Cape Town; Tate, London; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Moderna Museet, Stockholm and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Upcoming:
In Spring 2024, Shonibare will hold a solo exhibition at Serpentine, London. He will also participate in Nigeria’s Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2023
Boomerang: Returning to African Abstraction, James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
Ritual Ecstasy of The Modern, Cristea Roberts, London, UK
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA: Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK
2022
Restitution of the Mind and Soul, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, SA
Wind Sculpture in Bronze I, Royal Djurgarden, Stockholm
Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Sketch Room, Sketch, London, UK
2021
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA: African Spirits of Modernism, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK
Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire, Museum der Moderne - Salzburg, Austria
2020 - 2021
Earth Kids, James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
2020
Yinka Shonibare CBE: Radical Hybridity, M Woods Art Community, Beijing, China
Yinka Shonibare CBE: Justice For All, The Arts House (the Old Parliament House), Singapore
Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past and Present, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA
When Home Won't Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, USA
Wind Sculpture (SG) V, Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston, USA
2019
Yinka Shonibare CBE: Flower Power, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan
A Tale of Today: Yinka Shonibare CBE, Driehaus Museum, Chicago, USA
Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
Creatures of the Mappa Mundi, Hereford Cathedral, Hereford, UK
2018
The American Library, Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College, North Carolina, USA
Yinka Shonibare MBE, Fitzrovia Chapel, London, UK End of Empire, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, UK
Ruins Decorated, Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, SA
Yinka Shonibare MBE, Busan Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023
Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes, South London Gallery, London, UK
The Magic of the Silver Swan, The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, UK
Threads, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK
The 255th Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
Tales for a Stranger, The Warehouse by MARUANI MERCIER, Brussels, Belgium
To Be Free, Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury, UK
Gemma De Angelis Testa Donation Exhibition, Ca’ Pesaro- International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice, Italy
Trace — Formations of Likeness. Photography and Video from The Walther Collection, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
The Art of Fabric: Textile as Artistic Material, Kunsthalle Vogelmann, Heilbronn, Germany
Crosscurrents: Intercultural Conversations in Art, MW Gallery, Flint, Michigan, USA
Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah, UAE
TAGUKORE: Dunno A Thing About Art (But I Like It) from the Taguchi Art Collection, Kadokawa Culture Museum, Saitama, Japan
Between Before and After, Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, UK
2022
A Gateway to Possible Worlds: Art & Science Fiction, Centre Pompidou Metz, France
The World Reimagining globe trail, various locations around the UK
Earth: Diggin Deep in British Art 1715 - 2022, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
The Double: Identity and Difference in Art Since 1990, National Gallery of Art, Washington
London Calling, Palazzo Cipolla (Terzo Pilastro Foundation), Rome, Italy
Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, V & A, South Kensignton
The Future is Blinking: Early Studio Photography from West and Central Africa, Museum Rietberg Zurich, Switzerland
Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of Youth, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia
Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art, Museum of Arts and Design, New York
Responsibility to Reveal: 30 Years of the Knight Purchase Award for Photographic Media, Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio, USA
Crazy, Chiostro de Bramante Foundation, Rome
And I Must Scream, Michael C Carlos Museum of Emory University, Atlanta, US
Selected Exhibitions
Image courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photographer: Mark Blower.
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA: Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK
6 October – 11 November 2023
Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun, a solo exhibition of new works by Yinka Shonibare CBE, will be the first show held at Stephen Friedman Gallery’s new London home on Cork Street, Mayfair. Having joined SFG in 1996, Shonibare is one of the gallery’s longest represented artists.
The exhibition includes a group presentation of African artists, and artists from the African diaspora, curated by Shonibare. Some of these artists participated in Shonibare’s residency program at Guest Artists Space Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria. Paintings, sculptures, mixed media pieces and works on paper will be exhibited.
Image courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photographer: Mark Blower.
“I want to challenge notions of cultural authenticity, by creating a composite ideology, ‘a third myth’, exploring appropriation, cultural identity, and the ability to transform beyond what is expected and therefore compels us to contemplate our world differently”
- Yinka Shonibare CBE RA.
Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, UK
22 September - 4 November 2023
Cristea Roberts Gallery is pleased to present Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern by Yinka Shonibare CBE. New woodblock prints and hand-painted sculptures of African ritual artefacts will be unveiled alongside earlier works featuring the motif of the all-American cowboy and symbols of the British empire, showcasing Shonibare’s evolving printmaking practice over the past seven years.
The new works represent the tangled relationships between Africa and Europe, illustrating the radical influence of African artefacts on the work of western modernists, from Picasso, Derain, Modigliani, Matisse to Man Ray to the Dada and Surrealist movements.
“We are going through a kind of African renaissance moment now, too, so I wanted to understand the origins of how Black culture became fashionable in Western modernism. I am kind of revisiting how the power of African aesthetics managed to inspire a whole movement in the west.” – Yinka Shonibare
Installation view of Yinka Shonibare CBE: Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern at Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, 2023. Photo: Sam Roberts Photography.
Image courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photographer: Mark Blower.
Image courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photographer: Mark Blower.
Yinka Shonibare CBE at the Princess Estelle Sculpture Garden
Wind Sculpture in Bronze I, 2022, at the Princess Estelle Sculpture Garden in Stockholm. This monumental outdoor sculpture explores the notion of freezing a moment in time and sculpting the impossible--the motion of the wind. Throughout his career, Shonibare has made work that embodies concepts of contradiction and ambivalence as a way of interrogating our assumptions. This new work - made out a heavy material but resembling a weightless piece of cloth blowing in the wind - continues the exploration of this throughline in Shonibare’s work. He challenges traditional ideas about identity as being more of a construct rather than a truth.
Yinka Shonibare, CBE, Wind Sculpture in Bronze I, 2022, Hand-painted bronze, 78 3/4 x 61 1/8 x 43 1/4 in. (200 x 155 x 110 cm). Photo: Sofia Johansson
Yinka Shonibare, CBE, Wind Sculpture in Bronze I, 2022, Hand-painted bronze, 78 3/4 x 61 1/8 x 43 1/4 in. (200 x 155 x 110 cm). Photo: Sofia Johansson
Yinka Shonibare CBE: Restitution of the Mind and Soul
Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
15 September – 17 November 2022
Goodman Gallery presents Restitution of the Mind and Soul, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in Cape Town; his second exhibition with the gallery since presenting the iconic African Library to South Africa in 2018, which then marked the artist’s first show on the Continent for fifteen years.
The premise for Shonibare’s exhibition four years ago, titled Ruins Decorated, rested on his belief that culture has evolved out of a process described by the artist as a “mongrelisation”.
Restitution of the Mind and Soul takes Shonibare’s enduring interest in the legacy of African aesthetics to the next level, responding to the fact that “the African contribution to modernism has never really been celebrated in the way it ought to be” (Shonibare). For this latest body of work - spanning quilts, masks and sculpture - Shonibare considers how African aesthetics have shaped western modernist expression.
Installation view, Yinka Shonibare CBE: Restitution of the Mind and Soul, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, 15 September – 17 November 2022. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Photographer: Anthea Pokroy.
Installation view, Yinka Shonibare CBE: Restitution of the Mind and Soul, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, 15 September – 17 November 2022. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Photographer: Anthea Pokroy.
Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire
Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
22 May – 3 October 2021
The major solo exhibition, Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire, gathers over sixty works from the past thirty years, celebrating Yinka Shonibare CBE's multimedia oeuvre and its probing constructions of race, class, and national and cultural identities through a sustained study of the historic interdependencies between Africa and Europe.
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 visualise them in tragicomic scenes of human activity.
Installation view, Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 22 May - 03 October 2021. Courtesy the artist and Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Photographer: Rainer Iglar
Yinka Shonibare MBE
Fitzrovia Chapel, London, UK
3 – 6 October 2018
A solo presentation of hand-painted sculptures and works on canvas by Yinka Shonibare MBE is presented by Stephen Friedman Gallery in the grade Grade II* listed Fitzrovia Chapel, London.
In the central nave stand three unique sculptures in which Shonibare reinterprets masterpieces of Greek and Roman antiquity. In each work, Shonibare's figures are transformed with the artist's uniquely designed signature Dutch wax batik patterns that are painted directly onto the surface. Each bears a bespoke handmade globe as its head that depicts a contemporary map, alluding to a form of universal identity. Reimagining these classical myths for the present day, Shonibare retains the dramatic impact of the original statues. By situating Shonibare’s works within this magnificent space, the artist’s signature patterns and seductive colours interrupt Western religious iconography and the canons of classical and Renaissance art.
Installation view, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Fitzrovia Chapel, London, 3-6 October 2018. Courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photographer: Mark Blower.
Installation view, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Fitzrovia Chapel, London, 3-6 October 2018. Courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photographer: Mark Blower.
Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE
Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
13 February – 26 August 2019
Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE brings together a series of artworks, including sculptures, photographs and a major installation, created between 2008 and 2018, which are connected through their use of Dutch Wax fabric.
The exhibition takes as its starting point an appreciation for the fabric’s materiality and the conceptual as well as historical meanings associated with it and also provides a context for Wind Sculpture (SG) III, 2018, which has recently been acquired by Norval Foundation, and permanently installed in the Norval Foundation Sculpture Garden.
At the centre of this exhibition is The African Library, 2018, the most recent iteration of the library series venerating first or second-generation immigrants who have shaped a country’s social, political or cultural life. Comprised of approximately 4,900 books covered in Dutch Wax fabric, The African Library broadens the initial concept of the artwork by celebrating the contributions that immigrant and non-immigrant Africans have made to the continent’s independence movements, science, arts and technological innovation, by emblazoning their names in gold along the spines of books.
Alongside The African Library, is the five-part photographic series The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 2008. Drawing upon the eighteenth-century Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s satiric etching of the same name, the works are similarly critical of humanity’s inability to be truly rational. Each of the five photographs relate to a specific continent, acting as personifications of these land masses, yet the ethnicity of the figure in each image confuses traditional expectations of who inhabits a given continent. Two figurative sculptures included in this exhibition, Boy Balancing Knowledge II, 2016 and Butterfly Kid (Girl) IV, 2017, while playful, nonetheless suggest significant subjects for the next generation: escape from an environmentally compromised planet, and the weight and precariousness of our systems of knowledge.
Installation view, Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, 13 February –26 August 2019. Courtesy Norval Foundation, Cape Town. Photographer: Dave Southwood.
Installation view, Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, 13 February –26 August 2019. Courtesy Norval Foundation, Cape Town. Photographer: Dave Southwood.
Installation view, Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, 13 February –26 August 2019. Courtesy Norval Foundation, Cape Town. Photographer: Dave Southwood.
Selected Artworks
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Hybrid Sculpture (Athena Mattei/Bété Mask), 2022
Fibreglass and wood sculpture, hand-painted with Batik
pattern, and steel base plate or plinth
Figure: 164 x 69.5 x 46 cm (64.6 x 27.4 x 18.1 in.)
Plinth: 70 x 62 x 64 cm (27.6 x 24.4 x 25.2 in.)
Unique
Restitution of the Mind and Soul takes Shonibare’s enduring interest in the legacy of African aesthetics to the next level, responding to the fact that “the African contribution to modernism has never really been celebrated in the way it ought to be” (Shonibare). For this latest body of work, Shonibare considers how African aesthetics have shaped western modernist expression. This work directly responds to Picasso’s collection of African artefacts, juxtaposing icons of classical European antiquity with these artefacts. Using Picasso’s collection as a starting point, these new works are a response to the widely acknowledged influence that African imagery had on major twentieth century artists and on entire western art movements, such as Cubism, Dada and Surrealism. Classical European sculptures of goddesses drawn from Greek and Roman mythology are hand-painted with Shonibare’s signature Dutch wax batik patterns, their heads replaced with replicas of African masks complimentary to the figure’s associated myths. Each mask has been drawn from a prominent twentieth century artist’s collection.
“Art making is a form of alchemy, in a way, because you are trying…to make gold from nothing. When it works very well is when you manage to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.”
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Hybrid Sculpture (Terpsichore/Bété-Guro Mask), 2022
Fibreglass and wood sculpture, hand-painted with Batik
pattern, and steel base plate or plinth
Figure: 150 x 56 x 44.5 cm (59.1 x 22 x 17.5 in.)
Plinth: 70 x 67 x 57 cm (27.6 x 26.4 x 22.4 in.)
Unique
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Hybrid Mask (Fang) II, 2022
Hand painted wooden mask
Work: 44.6 x 29.5 x 21.7 cm (17.6 x 11.6 x 8.5 in.)
Unique
Hybrid Mask (Fang) II recreates a mask from André Derain's collection, now housed in the Centre Pompidou Collection. The Hybrid Mask series by Yinka Shonibare are intricate, hand-painted masks that consider how African aesthetics have shaped western modernist expression. Using the African artefacts held in the collections of Georges Braque, André Derain and Amedeo Modigliani as a starting point they are a response to the widely acknowledged influence that African imagery had on major twentieth century artists and on entire western art movements, such as Cubism, Dada and Surrealism. The work exposes the conflicted relationships between ‘western’ and ‘tribal’, appropriation and admiration.
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Fabric Bronze II, 2022
Bronze sculpture, hand-painted with Dutch wax pattern
Work: 95.5 x 98 x 78 cm (37.6 x 38.6 x 30.7 in.)
Unique
Fabric Bronze is a series of bronze sculptures, each of which is hand- painted with a Dutch wax textile pattern, that explore the notion of harnessing the wind and freezing it in a moment of time. The work manifests as a three-dimensional piece of fabric that appears to be blowing in reaction to the natural elements of the surrounding environment. The tension of these abstract works will be heightened by the contrast of the media used, and the delicate movement recreated. Here, the piece refers the solidity of a sculptural object, whilst also encapsulating the naturally occurring phenomenon of wind. The structure is deconstructed by patterns normally associated with soft wearable textile.
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Beekeeper (Boy) II, 2022
Fibreglass mannequin, Dutch wax printed cotton textile,
steel baseplate, bespoke globe, straw, aluminium, nylon,
brass, wood, paint and resin.
Work: 122 x 52 x 64 cm (48 x 20.5 x 25.2 in.)
Unique
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
The African Library Collection: Climate Change Activists, 2023
Approximately 225 Hardback books, Dutch wax printed
cotton textile, gold foiled names, bookcase, bespoke
card catalogue box
Work: 233.7 x 139.7 x 33.7 cm (92 x 55 x 13.3 in.)
Unique
The African Library is a commemoration to those who played a significant role in the African independence movements. The installation consists of thousands of books covered in the artist’s signature Dutch wax fabrics, with the names of notable figures from the continent’s past and present printed on the book spines. Highlighted are those who supported and fought for independence whilst other books bear the names of preeminent Africans who have helped shape the continent’s modern identity since self-rule. These names include the heads of state, both good and bad, and the names of Africans both on the continent and from the diaspora, who have made consequential contributions to aspects of African life.
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
The African Library, 2018
6000 hardback books, Dutch wax printed cotton textile,
gold foiled names and website
Variable Dimensions
Unique
Selected Press
The Art Newspaper, A Call to Action: 2024 Venice Biennale to feature more than 300 Artists with Focus on Indigenous and Queer Figures, January, 2024 READ
The Guardian, ‘Embrace the Unexpected’: African Art Boosts its Presence at Venice Biennale,‘Embrace the Unexpected’: African Art Boosts its Presence at Venice Biennale, December, 2023 READ
BBC News, Leeds: David Oluwale Flower Sculpture Unveiled in City Centre, November, 2023 READ
Art Review, Power 100, December, 2023 READ
The Guardian, ‘This is Going to be Our Angel of the North’: Leeds Unveils Yinka Shonibare Sculpture, November, 2023 READ
Frieze, Yinka Shonibare Invites A Community of Artists to London, October, 2023 READ
The New York Times, An Artist Pushes Back Against Cultural Colonialism, October, 2023 READ
BBC News: Witness History, Yinka Shonibare: Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, October, 2023 READ
Apollo Magazine, Frieze Week Highlights: West African Masks and New York Bohemia, October, 2023 READ
Colossal, In Two Major Exhibitions, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA Celebrates African Aesthetics and Cultural Hybridity, October, 2023 READ