Yinka Shonibare CBE RA Hybrid Mask (Fang), 2022 Hand painted wooden mask Work: 43 x 26 x 16 cm
Hybrid Mask (Fang) recreates a mask from André Derain's collection, now housed in the Centre Pompidou Collection. The Hybrid Mask series by Yinka Shonibare are intricate, hand-painted masks that consider how African aesthetics have shaped western modernist expression. Using the African artefacts held in the collections of Georges Braque, André Derain and Amedeo Modigliani as a starting point they are a response to the widely acknowledged influence that African imagery had on major twentieth century artists and on entire western art movements, such as Cubism, Dada and Surrealism. The work exposes the conflicted relationships between ‘western’ and ‘tribal’, appropriation and admiration.
“I want to challenge notions of cultural authenticity, by creating a composite ideology, ‘a third myth’, exploring appropriation, cultural identity, and the ability to transform beyond what is expected and therefore compels us to contemplate our world differently” - Yinka Shonibare CBE RA.
