2004-10 Shonibare, Yinka Artforum.com Review 202 words
This small survey was judiciously selected: Three works sufficiently outline the boundaries of current Turner Prize nominee Yinka Shonibare's practice, and a fourth piece suggests a way to expand them—a necessary move for an artist who has recently seemed to be on autopilot. For several years Shonibare has used brightly colored and patterned African kinte cloth (originally made in Holland for Indonesians; later printed in England for West African markets) as an inspiration and medium. 100 Years, 2000, comprises one hundred small canvases on which various kinte patterns alternate with crudely painted graphic squiggles reminiscent of the 1940s moment when Surrealism was becoming Abstract Expressionism (and a host of European and American artists had a heightened interest in “primitive” African art). Characters culled from farther back in the history of European painting often populate Shonibare's sculptural tableaux. Pedagogy Boy/Boy, 2003, presents two schoolboys whose period dress is sewn from fabric featuring similar African patterns. For his collaboration with the Workshop, Shonibare printed the images and names of 1970s “Philly Sound” bands (The Intruders, The O'Jays) onto sculptures of a male and female astronaut. Its site-responsive (if not quite -specific) character brings forward by about a century Shonibare's infusion of African (and now African-American) culture into the history of “Western” achievement.


Yinka Shonibare in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Space Walk (detail)
2002
Courtesy of the artist and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia