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FEBRUARY 2006

Artist Yinka Shonibare:
Reflections on the Journeys of Our Ancestors

Yinka Shonibare: Works from the Permanent Collection is the fourth installation in the Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery exhibition series devoted to showcasing Copper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s permanent collection of 250,000 objects spanning twenty-three centuries. For this exhibition, prominent Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare MBE focuses his attention on the Museum’s diverse collection of travel-related objects from Europe, Asia, and America ranging from the sixteenth century through the twentieth centuries.

Shonibare has created specifically for this installation two life-size sculptures of the Museum’s founding sisters, Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt, wearing late Victorian-style costumes fashioned from his signature contemporary pseudo-African batik textiles. The playful, visually arresting a theme the artist has continually addressed throughout his career. The figures of the Hewitt sisters are placed on stilts, symbolizing, according to Shonibare, how the sisters “stand tall over their contemporaries in terms of their taste and adventurous spirit.” Shonibare’s sculptures are displayed alongside objects from Cooper-Hewitt’s Product Design and Decorative Arts, Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design, and Wall Coverings departments, as well as from the rare-book collection in the Museum’s National Design Library.

Shonibare is a self-described “postcolonial hybrid.” Born in London and raised in Nigeria, he often explores the historical integration of disparate cultures in his sculpture, photography, and, most recently, film. Through his ironic and highly imaginative combinations, Shonibare, a finalist for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2004, examines cultural stereotypes of class, race, gender, and identity. Transportation represents “fantasy fulfillment,” says Shonibare, adding that, fundamentally, “travel is something people do to improve themselves.” The artist hopes that Museum visitors, upon viewing this exhibition, will reflect on their own personal and travel histories and the journeys of their ancestors.#

Reprinted with permission of Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

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