The legendary artist discusses the human form and headlessness in some of his most celebrated works
Yinka Shonibare MBE Nigerian-raised, UK-based fine artist Yinka Shonibare MBE In the French Revolution all the nobility lost their heads. Everything is one of the pioneers of a generation of post-colonial creators about the body is about power, particularly when you are talking who draw on both the symbolic and very real — often violent — about colonialism. I’m interested in the power struggles of the legacies of the past, as well as contemporary realities, to make body during the colonial era, and how at that time the rich — and complex, tactile work that is at once engaging and unsettling. His artists who were rich — were celebrating the body in over-the-top output — which often reframes art-historical moments — encom- glory, while other bodies were being repressed. passes many mediums and inhabits different spaces (he created the Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar GB Are you a political artist? Square in London), and he is widely known for his installations YS I’m politically conscious, but I wouldn’t say I’m a political featuring bright African prints on Dutch wax fabric worn by head- artist. less mannequins. Here he explains how these seemingly anonymous forms address the exclusion of non-western, non-privileged GB Women’s bodies seem to feature in your work more reguperspectives and bodies from art, while also taking in issues of larly than those of men. Why is this? gender power dynamics in artistic representation. YS In the late 1980s it was very hard for artists to represent the female body in a positive way. It’s changed now, GB How did the headless bodies series come about? to some extent. I was coming up as an artist at that time, so it YS I’m asking questions about conventional canons of was the first exposure to the art world I really saw. I wanted to art and the exclusion of non-western art. I wanted to use challenge that and ask a question about the difficulties faced in the now-iconic ways that bodies have been represented in west- creating images of the female body in art. The way the body is being ern art to create a new tradition that challenges tradition at the presented in art is changing, but, of course, there can always be same time. more change. GB YS
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Why are your figures always headless? Because they are designed as a working-class protest.
Q&A taken from: PLAY WITH ME: DOLLS, WOMEN & ART by GRACE BANKS, published by LAURENCE KING. Image credit © YINKA SHONIBARE MBE. All rights reserved DACS / ARTIMAGE 2018. Image courtesy JAMES COHAN GALLERY. Photo STEPHEN WHITE.
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