Yinka Shonibare CBE

United Kingdom

Yinka Shonibare CBE (b. 1962) in London, UK, studied Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (1989) and received his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London (1991).His interdisciplinary practice uses citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities within the context of globalisation. Through examining race, class and the construction of cultural identity, his works comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.

In 2004, he was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 2008, his mid-career survey began at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, travelling in 2009 to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. In 2010, his first public art commission ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London and is in the permanent collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

In 2013, he was elected a Royal Academician and was awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’ in 2019. His installation ‘The British Library’ was acquired by Tate in 2019 and is currently on display at Tate Modern, London. Last year, Shonibare was awarded the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award. A major retrospective of his work opened at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg in May 2021 followed by his co-ordination of The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London which opened in September 2021.

The survey solo exhibition, Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head, opened in April 2022 at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan followed by the unveiling in June of a major new sculptural work, Wind Sculpture in Bronze I at Royal Djurgården, Stockholm.

Shonibare’s works are in notable museum collections internationally, including the Tate Collection, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and VandenBroek Foundation, The Netherlands.

In Earth Kids, Yinka Shonibare CBE makes a connection bet-ween the history of colonial domination and humankind’s domination of the natural world and exploitation of its limited resources. The quartet of child-scaled figures champ-ion the next generation of environmentalists fighting for climate justice — including young activists, such as Greta Thunberg — who have thrown a spotlight on the failings of previous generations of policy makers.

These works, Shonibare states, “are a call to action to protect the planet for our children.” Each of the four figures in Earth Kids represent an elemental force: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. These classical elements were believed by the Ancient Greeks to illustrate the complexity of the natural world. The artist has been making work about the elements and climate change since 2008.

The four children are seen wearing Victorian garments with Shonibare’s signature Dutch Wax fabric. These textiles were originally inspired by Indonesian design, mass-produced by the Dutch and eventually sold to the colonies in West Africa. In the 1960s, the material became a signifier of African identity and independence. Shonibare prizes these printed fabrics as signifiers of cultural hybridity and our global interdependence. For the clothing of the figures in Earth Kids, Shonibare has chosen patterns that playfully nod to the elements to which their wearers give form. For instance, Air Kid (Boy) is clad in a fabric that bears a mechanical fan motif while the dress of Fire Kid (Girl) flickers with flames and Water Kid (Girl) is printed with faucets.

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