Artist Biography
Yinka Shonibare was born in London in 1962 and grew up in the UK and Nigeria. In the 1980s he studied in London at the Byam Shaw School of Art and graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1991. Concerned with cultural hybridity and the construction of identity, Shonibare's videos, photographs and installations playfully mix up cultural and historical signifiers to blur boundaries between class and ethnicity, high and low art and coloniser-colonised relationships. Since the 1990s Shonibare has exhibited internationally extensively, including the Venice Biennale, 2001, and Documenta 11, Kassel, in 2002. In 2004 he was nominated for the Turner Prize. Yinka Shonibare is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; and James Cohan Gallery, New York.
Works
Un ballo in maschera (A masked ball) 2004
Reverend on ice 2005
Artist Statement
The use of excess, seduction, and pleasure in my work always remains political but without preaching politics, which is a different thing. I'm never moralistic. Instead it's a question of working through political issues as well as being seduced by the actual form, a question of provoking and seducing.
From 'Yinka Shonibare talks about Un ballo in maschera, 2004', Artforum, January 2005, p. 173.
