Yinka Shonibare

Yinka Shonibare (born 9 August 1962), is a British-Nigerian artist living in the United Kingdom.

His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation.

A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses.

As Shonibare is paralysed on one side of his body, he uses assistants to make works under his direction.

Yinka Shonibare was born in London, England, on 9 August 1962, the son of Olatunji Shonibare and Laide Shonibare.

When he was three years old, his family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where his father practised law.

When he was 17 years old, Shonibare returned to the UK to take his A-levels at Redrice School.

At the age of 18, he contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, which resulted in a long-term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed.

Shonibare studied Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of Art (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) and then at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he received his MFA degree, graduating as part of the Young British Artists generation.

Following his studies, Shonibare worked as an arts development officer for Shape Arts, an organisation that makes arts accessible to people with disabilities.

A key material in Shonibare's work since 1994 is the brightly coloured "African" fabric (Dutch wax-printed cotton) that he buys himself from Brixton market in London.

"But actually, the fabrics are not really authentically African the way people think," says Shonibare.

"They prove to have a crossbred cultural background quite of their own. And it's the fallacy of that signification that I like. It's the way I view culture – it's an artificial construct."

Shonibare claims that the fabrics were first manufactured in Europe to sell in Indonesian markets and were then sold in Africa after being rejected in Indonesia.

Today the main exporters of "African" fabric from Europe are based in Manchester in the UK and Vlisco Véritable Hollandais from Helmond in the Netherlands.

Despite being a European invention, the Dutch wax fabric is used by many Africans in England, such as Shonibare.

In 1999, Shonibare created four alien-like sculptures that he named "Dysfunctional Family", the piece consisting of a mother and daughter, both coloured in textures of white and blue, and a father and son textured in the colours of red and yellow.

He has exhibited at the Venice Biennial and at leading museums worldwide.

He was notably commissioned by Okwui Enwezor at documenta XI in 2002 to create his most recognised work, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, which launched him on the international stage.

Shonibare became an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths' College in 2003, was awarded an MBE in 2004, received an Honorary Doctorate (Fine Artist) of the Royal College of Art in 2010 and was appointed a CBE in 2019.

In 2004, he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for his Double Dutch exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and for his solo show at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Of the four nominees, he seemed to be the most popular with the general public that year, with a BBC website poll resulting in 64 per cent of voters stating that his work was their favourite.

In September 2008, his major mid-career survey commenced at the MCA Sydney and toured to the Brooklyn Museum, New York, in June 2009 and the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, in October 2009.

He joined Iniva's Board of trustees in 2009.

He has exhibited at the Venice Biennial and internationally at leading museums worldwide.

In 2010, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle became his first public art commission on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

He was elected Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts in 2013.

On 3 December 2016, one of Shonibare's "Wind Sculpture" pieces was installed in front of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art (NMAA) in Washington, DC.

The painted fibreglass work, titled "Wind Sculpture VII", is the first sculpture to be permanently installed outside the NMAA's entrance.

He runs Guest Projects, a project space for emerging artists based in Broadway Market, east London.

He is extending this to spaces in Lagos, Nigeria.

In 2023 his first work of public art was unveiled in Leeds.

Entitled Hibiscus Rising, it commemorates the life and Death of David Oluwale, a Nigerian homeless man persecuted by Leeds City Police.

Shonibare's work explores issues of colonialism alongside those of race and class, through a range of media which include painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, and, more recently, film and performance.

He examines, in particular, the construction of identity and tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe and their respective economic and political histories.

Mining Western art history and literature, he asks what constitutes our collective contemporary identity today.

Having described himself as a "post-colonial" hybrid, Shonibare questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions.

While he often makes work inspired by his own life and experiences around him, he takes inspiration from around the world; as he has said: "I'm a citizen of the world, I watch television so I make work about these things."

He has these fabrics made up into European 18th-century dresses, covering sculptures of alien figures or stretched onto canvases and thickly painted over.

Shonibare is well known for creating headless, life-size sculptural figures meticulously positioned and dressed in vibrant wax cloth patterns in order for history and racial identity to be made complex and difficult to read.