GL Strand

Yinka Shonibare MBE: FABRIC-ATION

21 Sep - 24 Nov 2013

Yinka Shonibare MBE: Food Faerie, 2010, Jonty Wilde, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2013 / Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai
Autumn at GL STRAND offers one of the absolutely major names on the international contemporary art scene. British-Nigerian Yinka Shonibare is currently arousing the enthusi­asm of the public and reviewers in England. Now the Dan­ish public will have a chance to make the acquaintance of the artist’s fascinating universe of headless soldiers and Victorian ballerinas in his first major solo show in Scandi­navia.

Over the past 15 years Yinka Shonibare has created an iconic oeuvre of headless mannequins that bring to life famous mom­ents of history and art history. With great commitment and equal degrees of seriousness, wit and humour he has mounted an assault on the colonialism of the Victorian era and its paral­lels in Thatcher’s Britain. In recent years he has widened the scope of his subjects to include global news, injustices and com­plications in a true cornucopia of media, for example film, photography, painting, sculpture and installation – all represen­ted in the show at GL STRAND.

FABRIC-ATION mainly gathers works from recent years, as well as a brand new work created for the exhibition, Copenhagen Girl with a Bullet in her Head. The subjects include Admiral Nel­son and his key position in British colonialism, the signifi­cance of globalization for the formation of modern man’s iden­tity, multiculturalism, global food production and the revo­lutions of the past few years in the Arab world. In other words, Shoni­bare is able, through an original and captivating universe, to pre­sent us with the huge complexity that defines our time, as well as the underlying history.

The title of the exhibition refers to Shonibare’s use of colour­ful patterned fabrics in his art; fabrics that are associated with Afri­ca, but which have their origin in Holland and were inten­ded for the Indonesian market, and which, typically for Shonibare, illustrate that things are rarely what they seem at first glance.
 

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