This event was recorded on July 13, 2022 at Anderson Ranch Art Center during the 2022 Summer Series, in partnership with Aspen Public Radio.
Yinka Shonibare's work is featured in notable museum collections, including 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. Yinkashonibare.com
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yinka Shonibare CBE (born in London in 1962) moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of 3. He returned to the United Kingdom to study fine arts at Byam Shaw School of Art, London and Goldsmiths College, London, where he received his Master of Fine Arts.
Shonibare’s interdisciplinary practice explores colonialism and post-colonialism within the context of globalization. Through examining race, class and the construction of cultural identity, Shonibare’s works — painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation — comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.
Shonibare uses wry citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities.
In 2013, he was elected as a Royal Academician, and in 2017, his "Wind Sculpture VI" was featured in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of the Arts, London as part of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Shonibare was also commissioned by the Yale Center for British Art to create his sculpture "Mrs Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina" for inclusion in "Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte and the Shaping of the Modern World," which went on display at Kensington Palace in London in 2017. In 2019, his installation "The British Library" was acquired by Tate.