yinka shonibare
Yinka Shonibare RA, CBE (born London, 1962) is a British-Nigerian artist who describes himself as a “post-colonial hybrid” and works in photography, painting, sculpture, installation and film. His creations often include batik-pattern fabrics which dress life-size sculptures to examine race, class, globalisation, and the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe. These fabrics, which became a symbol of African identity as its people began to gain independence from European powers in the 1960s, were introduced to West Africa by colonial merchants who had them made in factories in Indonesia. Works, like the Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, often cite famous works from Western art history. Yinka uses a wheelchair, and is an advocate for accessibility and inclusion in the art world.
