Yinka Shonibare Double Dutch Edited by the agency of Jaap Guldemond and Gabriele Mackert.

Yinka Shonibare Double Dutch

Edited by the agency of Jaap Guldemond and Gabriele Mackert, with Barbera van Kooij

Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2004 160 pp 75 color and 25 b/w photos, biography, bibliography. $3995 softcover

In just from one side of to the other a decade of artistic practice, Yinka Shonibare has captured and retained the attention of the contemporary Western art view with his eye-catching headless mannequins and engaging photo narratives. This London-based artist of Yoruba heritage addresses contemporary issues of globalization and the colonial past with a light-heartedness that has won him universal appeal.

Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch contains the chiefly comprehensive look at the artist's work to date. Lavishly illustrated with works spanning Shonibare's career (1994-2004) the colorful exhibit catalogue effectively imitates the experience of coming face to face with Shonibare's whimsical and vibrant works. Punctuated through a diverse assortment of scholarly articles, the catalogue is a treat for the intellect as well as the eye

The collection of seven articles six essays and united interview--use an assortment of scholarly approaches to explicate vital airs in Shonibare's works. The contributors, who focus forward the impact of sociohistorical proper states possess a wide range of expertise relevant to understanding Shonibare's complexus artistry. As a whole, the articles provide insight into the dominant tillages that are incorporated in Shonibare's works: traditional Nigerian, recent Western, and Victorian. While each article expands in succession the debate about categorizing Shonibare, the compilation provides a compelling synthesis of his diasporic identity.

Hugo Bonger and Gerald Matt introduce the catalogue by dint of describing Shonibare as "an example of the increasing hybridization of the one time unequivocal cultural or national definitions that has fundamentally altered the fashion of associating and dealing with cultivation in these cosmopolitan times" (p 8) The exhibit and accompanying catalogue are not meant to be a retrospective, unless instead focus on works chosen according to the principal themes of Shonibare's career. yet not explicitly identified by Bonger and Matt, the principal themes discussed include an exploration of colonialism and globalization, particularly the historical and contemporary relationship between Britain and Nigeria, and a preoccupation with the Victorian aristocracy. Illustrations, therefore, focus in succession Shonibare's Afro-Victorian mannequins, decapitated and aligned in sumptuous costumes fashioned from Dutch Wax print fabric, and photographs featuring Shonibare in the character of an African dandy.

Manthia Diawara's essay analyzes Shonibare's textile works, exploring the political and "Africanizing" drifts of his use of Dutch Wax prints. Diawara examines Shonibare's works as a combination of historical and contemporary signifiers, postcolonial hints to the colonial past of Afro-European relationships, embodied in clerical profession This "transtextuality," Diawara asserts, allows Shonibare to explore and challenge stereotype implying a multipilicity of identity.

Rather than adding to the sate of interviews focused on Shonibare's connection to Africa, Jaap Guldemond and Gabriele Mackert, editors of the catalogue and universal designers of the exhibit, question Shonibare forward the European influences in his art. The inclusion of this interview adds greatly to the existing literature forward Shonibare by looking at that which is not "African" about an artist who has been quot as saying "I don't give a toss about Africa." In this conversation, Shonibare discusses his work in relation to feminist and minimalist traditions in contemporary art and outlines his investigations into the Victorian era. Shonibare also explains the importance of the seductive quality of his works and his use of strategic fragmentation.

Expanding upon his extensive publications on Shonibare's use of textiles, John Picton study tributes an article that, for the first time, explores the iconography of the fabrics intrust with an agencyed This contribution is significant in furthering the visual analysis of Shonibare's exploitation of textiles. Reading the textiles themselves, Picton analyzes the relationship between the prints and their meaning and historical use in Yoruba refinement He reveals the messages codfished within the "African" textiles, proposing an added discourse he asserts is visible to Africans however hidden from the average European viewer.

In a previously published article, Angela McRobbie discusses Shonibare's 1998 photographic narrative Diary of a Victorian Dandy. This short article examines the theoretical implications of Shonibare's insertion of his admit body into genre scenes referencing the Victorian aristocracy, focusing onward the compelling dialogue between the historical and the contemporary. McRobbie's interpretation explains not single Shonibare's appropriation of the historical Victorian world however addresses the tools by which Shonibare rewrites history in a distinctly postcolonial viewpoint.