PEOPLE TO WATCH, PL ACES TO BE, PRODUCTS TO BUY
With his new exhibition, an artist redefines —and redecorates —our difficult history
On the ground floor of Yinka Shonibare’s east-London studio, two imperious figures from British history have been scaled down to slightlysmaller-than-life size. The statues are painted in bright patterns, an unmistakable signature of the artist’s work. For a moment or two, it makes them unrecognisable. Soon, you realise you are staring down Winston Churchill (the hunch is a giveaway) and William Pitt the Younger (this one, admittedly, takes a little prompting from a studio assistant). The British-Nigerian artist, 61, identifies them as “decolonised structures”, inspired by statues of people who have links to an ugly past — the slave trade or colonial administrations, for example — and now watch over London streets. With his reimagined effigies, Shonibare wonders: “Are they being celebrated, because they have all these wonderful colours on them? Are they being improved? Or is this a critique?”
Those will be the questions for visitors to the artist’s exhibition, Suspended States, at Serpentine South, in London, this April. “My work is influenced generally by what’s in the media, and also by the fundamental issues to do with my own identity,” he explains. One room will be dedicated to a selection of the statues, which he began thinking about when the monument of Bristolborn slave trader Edward Colston was toppled in 2020, during the global protests that followed the murder of George Floyd. What was Shonibare’s reaction? “A mix of feelings, because on the one hand, I’m not going to support somebody who enslaved a whole lot of people, but then, where do you stop? Do you go to the libraries, start picking up books you don’t like and burning them?”
Another installation, “The War Library”, will build on a past project, “The British Library” at Tate Modern, where thousands of hardback books were covered in Shonibare’s colourful fabrics. On the spines were the names of first- and secondgeneration immigrants who have contributed to British society and culture, from Noel Gallagher to Zadie Smith, as well as opponents of immigration (looking at you, Nigel Farage). In the new work, the titles will revolve around conflict; Shonibare had been thinking about events in Ukraine and wars generally: why do we fight? How have we found solutions? Have any peace treaties proven successful? Around 6,000 books exploring those topics will be featured. “I’m not necessarily making a point, I’m not making moral judgements,” says Shonibare, who is both detailed and curious in conversation. “I just want people to see what we’ve done and think about it.”
