The Sculptural Portraits of Yinka Shonibare

Yinka Shonibare - The Age of Enlightenment, Antoine Lavoisier
2008

This is the first art work of Yinka Shonibare on view at Hirshhorn. The artist was born in 1962 in London. His parents were Nigerians and he spent his childhood in Lagos.

His African roots are visible in his works: there is an exuberance there, and this is due not only for the use of colorful textiles; there is a challenge there, and this is due not only for showing the personages as beheaded.

His headless mannequins of personalities of the Enlightenment century (like Lavoisier here) are dramatic, yet ambiguous, challenging the idea of portraiture, challenging also our cultural mantras.

He started from the well known portrait made by David and kept some details with keen scrupulosity, while adding his ones (wheelchair, headless, African fabric of dress) that put a question mark to he whole. It is some mix of Photo-Realism and Hyper-Realism, but this is not the point. It is a mix of exuberance and iconoclasm: the European culture reconsidered through an African system of measurements.






(Hirshhorn Museum)

(Contemporary Art)