Yinka Shonibare (Studio Museum in Harlem)

Solo show at Studio Museum in Harlem. 2002
Date: 24 January, 2002 until 31 March, 2002
Curator: Thelma Golden
Organiser: Studio Museum in Harlem

Solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, of ten works by Yinka Shonibare, made between 1994 and 2001. From the Foreword & Acknowledgments by Lowery Stokes Sims, Director of the Studio Museum:

“From its initial founding, The Studio Museum in Harlem has sought to understand and redefine Africa and the museum has explored the rich traditions in African art. This exhibition allows us to not only make visible our newly expanded mission which includes the presentation of artists of African descent, but also our renewed commitment to the presentation of innovative contemporary art.”

Within her catalogue essay, Thelma Golden, the exhibition’s organiser, wrote  “Born in Nigeria and a resident of London, Yinka Shonibare has brilliantly dismantled the myths of Africanism, even as he has cleverly - and beautifully - exploited its apeal. He has played a crucial role in the debate on multiculturalism and post-colonialism in the United Kingdom. As a student at Goldsmith’s (sic) the leading art school in London, in the 1980s, he devoted himself to work about globalism and other aesthetic and political issues. One day, a professor asked him why he didn’t make “real African art.” Shonibare replied dryly: “I’m African and if I’m making it, it’s African art.”

Shonibare was in fact born in London.

The small but extensively illustrated catalogue included an essay on Shonibare by Okwui Enwezor.

»  Yinka Shonibare (Studio Museum in Harlem)

Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2002