Special Opportunity - Renowned Global Artist Now in GR
Yinka Shonibare Exhibit Now At Meijer Garden, Grand Rapids, MI
Many of us have flown to New York to see a show or exhibition. Some of us have traveled to Europe to see popular artistic sites and museums, but when great art is in our own backyard it is sometimes overlooked or discounted. Conversely, some people outside of the Midwest may ignore work shown in the “middle of the country” as not worth of their time. Please don’t let these predispositions allow you to miss the current Yinka Shonibare Exhibit at the Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, MI.
I first became aware of Yinka Shonibare when the Friends of Modern Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts contributed to the acquisition of the artist’s work titled, Sarah Hewitt (serving on museum boards is a great way to expand your knowledge of important artists who may not be on your radar, but that is a topic for another blog). Seeing the piece at the DIA was magical. He is represented by James Cohan in NY and Stephen Friedman in his home city of London. Between visits to James’s Gallery and pieces shown at Art Basel, I fell in love with his work, and in 2021 after years of my failing to “pull the trigger”, my partner Peter surprised me and purchased a wonderful piece for our home.
You can easily read all about Yinka, but in a nutshell, he is a mid-career artist who is on the minds of many art world leaders. He gets a fair bit of attention. He was born in London to Nigerian parents and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, where he spoke Yoruba at home and English at the private school he attended, Shonibare has a bicultural heritage. His identity is shaped by the postcolonial experience of being in two places at once; growing up located between the center and margin of the British Empire. Postcolonialism and hybridity define his artistic and political identity and are major themes in his prodigious artistic output. While Shonibare embraces cross-cultural mixing and exchange in his work, he never shies from alluding to the postcolonial scars of cultural imperialism and exploitation.
When you visit the Meijer Garden you will find a relatively large show which shows a great cross-section of his work and the fabrics and materials that he is best known for using. Many of the works have never been shown in the United States, among them sculptures, paintings, photographs, collages, embroidery, and film. Shonibare is a self-proclaimed "postcolonial hybrid" of British-Nigerian heritage. He is best known for his playful combination of colorful Dutch wax-fabric patterns popular in West Africa with the fashion of upper-class Victorian culture.
Enjoy some of my pictures of the Yinka Shonibare pieces currently on display. (warning these are not a substitute for seeing this work for yourself). Yinka is someone you want to have on your radar.
PS, check out the story in August’s issue of Wallpaper Magazine titled “ Design for A Better World” for a piece he collaborated on with Lady Ashley Shaw-Scott Adjaye on with
Lastly, make sure to plan your visit to the DIA between Oct 2, 2022, and Jan 22, 2023, for the Van Gogh in America Exhibit. Member tickets are already on sale and apparently going fast.
