Contemporary Art, 1960s–presentContemporary Art and Globalization |
Who is Yinka Shonibare, MBE? |
Yinka Shonibare (1962–) is a British Nigerian artist whose work takes many forms, including video, photography, installation, and performance. Some of his most well-known work questions racial identity and relationships between cultures in a post-colonial world. His sculptural work, Scramble for Africa (2003), depicts headless European leaders dressed in European-style clothes made with African printed fabrics as they divide up the resources of the continent amongst themselves. He was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.
Contemporary artist Yinka Shonibare questions assumptions of race and class in his post-colonial work, Diary of a Victorian Dandy (1998), which includes self-portraits of the artist in the Victorian dress of the British upper class. (Art courtesy The Israel Museum, Jerusalem / Gift of the Stanley H. Picker Trust, London / to the British Friends of the Art Museums of Israel / The Bridgeman Art Library).