Yinka Shonibare | Earth Pictures
Goodman Gallery is pleased to present Yinka Shonibare’s Earth Pictures, an exhibition that explores the profound impact of Western colonisation and industrialisation on nature and climate change across the African continent. Through his masks and a new series of quilts, Yinka Shonibare draws attention to endangered species and the abundance of nature, while also highlighting how human actions negatively affect our planet. The exhibition runs concurrently with the artist’s first major exhibition on the African continent, Safiotra [Hybridités/Hybridities] on view at Madagascar’s Fondation H.
“I deal with post-colonialism in my work and the environmental issue is of course closely related to this… The poorest countries emit the least pollution into the environment and they suffer the consequences disproportionately” – Shonibare speaking to The Art Newspaper, July 2024
A new series of quilts produced for the exhibition titled Nature Works will make their global debut in Johannesburg and underscores the polluting consequences of extractive processes. Through striking composition, vivid colour and intricate needlework, Shonibare creates beauty in ultimately dystopian landscapes that illustrate the consequences of industrial over-exploitation in Africa. The history of colonisation on the continent has always centred on the extraction of both human and natural resources. The series of quilts here, portray landscapes as a genre which is to be analysed and debated. Human intervention in the landscape, whether it be the burning of gas flares in Nigeria or the damage to surface soil through the oil well drilling in Algeria, contribute to environmental destruction and the broader impacts of climate change and its disproportionate impact on the Global South.
Artworks
About
Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare (b. 1962, London, United Kingdom) studied Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (1989) and received his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London (1991). His interdisciplinary practice uses citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities within the context of globalisation. Through examining race, class and the construction of cultural identity, his works comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.
In 2024, Serpentine Gallery, London UK, presented a solo exhibition of works in their Serpentine South gallery titled Suspended States. Shonibare’s work is also featured at the Venice Biennale 2024 as part of the Nigerian Pavilion, in the group show: Nigeria Imaginary.
To mark Sharjah Biennial’s 30th anniversary in February 2023, Shonibare was commissioned to create a series of new works for the exhibition. He also unveiled a new outdoor sculpture commissioned by the David Oluwale Memorial Association in Aire Park, Leeds as part of Leeds 2023.
In November 2022, Shonibare hosted the international launch of Guest Artists Space (G. A. S.) Foundation, a non-profit founded and developed by the artist. The Foundation is dedicated to facilitating cultural exchange through residencies, public programmes and exhibition opportunities for creative practitioners from around the world. The live/work residency spaces are set across sites in Lagos and a rural working farm in Ijebu, Ogun State.
A major retrospective of his work opened at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg in the same year followed by his co-ordination of The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London which opened in September 2021. The survey solo exhibition, Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head, opened in April 2022 at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan followed by the unveiling in June 2022 of a major new sculptural work, Wind Sculpture in Bronze I at Royal Djurgården, Stockholm.
In 2013, he was elected a Royal Academician and was awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’ in 2019. His installation ‘The British Library’ was acquired by Tate in 2019 and is currently on display at Tate Modern, London. Shonibare was awarded the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award in 2021.
In 2010, his first public art commission ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London and is in the permanent collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. In 2008, his mid-career survey began at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, travelling in 2009 to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. In 2004, he was nominated for the Turner Prize.
Notable museum collections include: the Tate Collection, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and VandenBroek Foundation, The Netherlands.
Shonibare lives and works in London, United Kingdom.
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