Yinka Shonibare Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection

Yinka Shonibare Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection is the fourth installation in the Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery exhibition series devoted to the permanent collection. Renowned British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE is the third guest curator in the series, and has focused in this exhibition on themes of travel and transportation as exemplified by collection objects ranging from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. Shonibare has supplemented the exhibition by creating three-dimensional, life-sized sculptures of the Museum's founders, Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt, wearing late Victorian-style dress fashioned from his signature contemporary pseudo-African batik textiles. This playful juxtaposition visually provokes viewers and reinforces Shonibare's personal thesis on the nature of cultural dissemination. The figures of the Hewitt sisters are placed on stilts, symbolizing, as Shonibare notes, their "superiority over their contemporaries in terms of their taste and adventurous spirit."

The diverse selection of objects is culled from Cooper-Hewitt's departments of Product Design and Decorative Arts; Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design; and Wallcoverings, as well as from the Library's rare book holdings. On display are diaries kept by the Hewitt sisters during their international travels, alongside a sample of some of the treasures they collected as part of the original study collection. Exhibition highlights include whimsical nineteenth-century bird cages, Marmon model cars, 20th Century Limited train brochures, eighteenth-century French illustrations of Chinese boats, Wedgewood porcelain, chinoiserie wall panels, and an Asprey travel box.

Shonibare is a self-described "postcolonial hybrid," born in London and raised in Nigeria. He often explores the historical integration of disparate cultures in his sculpture, photography, and, most recently, film. Through his ironic and highly imaginative combinations of themes and materials, Shonibare examines cultural stereotypes of class, race, gender, and identity. A finalist for the 2004 Turner Prize for his exhibition Double Dutch at the Museum Boijmans Van BeunIngen, Rotterdam, and his solo show at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, Shonibare is an artist of international stature and significance. For Shonibare, travel is a "fantasy-fulfillment activity, something people do to improve themselves." Upon viewing this exhibition, Shonibare hopes that Museum viewers will reflect on their own personal histories and the travel journeys of their ancestors.

The exhibition will take place until May 7, 2006.

For further information, please visit http://ndm.si.edu/EXHIBITIONS/collections_...INKA/index.html

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