Yinka Shonibare

Yinka Shonibare Double Dress, or how we all have multiple roles and clothing for them

Yinka Shonibare’s art continues the discussion on cultural hybrids introduced by the ARS 01 exhibition. Shonibare’s art is visual and emotional, yet possesses multi-level features on the connection between culture and identity. He makes fun of the central images and literary figures of Western culture or turns their hierarchies upside down: the dandy’s black valet becomes the dandy himself. In more recent works, Shonibare refers to current space science and its ”colonialist” underspinnings.

Yinka Shonibare has been characterised as a genuine artist of the new millennium: he is nomadic, multi-cultural, funny and accessible, and his works deal with identity and the post-colonial world, on the axes of Europe/Africa and, more recently, Earth/Space.

Shonibare wants to show the funny side of the discourse on identity and post-colonialism. He has stated that as the discussion has been going on for quite a while now, it might be time we looked at them from another perspective, one which ultimately is no less ’serious’ than the earlier ones. Yet he maintains that racial, cultural and identity-related problems have by no means been resolved and that they should be addressed on all levels, but he reminds us that Africans also know how to laugh.

The popular features of Shonibare’s art are a conscious choice of language, related to contemporary culture, which according to Shonibare is characterised by the entertainment culture.

Shonibare’s figures evoke narratives in the viewer’s mind. We can ponder who these people were, or their characters, revived for this occasion, with well-known European paintings or literary works in the background. Oscar Wilde’s dandy is re-born black, and the satirical drawings on artificial manners and social standing by William Hogarth receive a ”black” interpretation. The identity of the protagonists is changed, which introduces another narrative: a counter-narrative, if you like, utilising the appearance and allusions of the original work. Part of this change is indirect: viewers are expected to fill in the gaps on their own, to complete the ”what if?” between the versions. An interesting continuation for this artistic technique is Shonibare’s most recent works, which turn their gaze on space and aliens as depicted in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The time dimension here is towards the future. Space men are the explorers of our day, and their expeditions may lead to a new kind of colonial era. Shonibare depicts these characters wearing colourful, bright batik clothing emphasising their African identity, thus, providing future development with African signs. The irony in the use of the fabric lies in the fact that the pattern based on Indonesian batik printing was made in Holland and exported from Manchester to West Africa, where it was adopted as the symbol of a new, politically aware and independent African identity. The point of the volatility of identities and the random nature of the symbols involved is inescapable.

Yet the visual extravaganza of Shonibare is also a trap, leading us deeper and deeper into the levels of signification. The initial surprise and humour soon reveal social and cultural inequality, which remains to be resolved. The question of how it can be resolved, as long as we remain selfish and xenophobic and our world so flagrantly unequal in terms of the economy, remains unanswered as well. In actual fact, Shonibare discusses a situation where cultures should live side by side as equals, engaged in a dialogue and extending and deepening each other’s views. He discusses metropolises and centres, turning their cultures and traditions upside down in a Bakhtinian carnival spirit, making the servant a king for the day. The carnival is an outlet for social frustration, but it also safeguards the continuation of the social model it supports. Yet the issue here is awareness, not solution-seeking: smiling instead of moralising.

The contemporary view of identity sees identity as a narrative, which we develop throughout our lives. The nucleus is the process of selecting the ingredients, it is what makes us our true selves; the selections constitute the underlying connection rather than traditional “onion-peeling”, which ultimately reveals a sort of ever-existent core. In this new view, we can continuously expand and deepen the areas in which we operate, which we experience, think and deal with. Furthermore, we can refine and become more refined in our ways of looking at them. And what is best: we can change our ways of thinking and acting, we dare change our opinions and maintain a curiosity towards others and other cultures.

Maaretta Jaukkuri
Chief Curator, Kiasma