The Serpentine Gallery in London's Hyde Park is hosting Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA’s solo exhibition Suspended States from April 12 - September 1, 2024. Returning to a London gallery with a major exhibition after over 20 years, Shonibare, a British artist of Nigerian heritage, has long focused on dismantling colonialism's racial and cultural legacies. With current geopolitics, his multidisciplinary practice, notable for its critical engagement with historical narratives and imperial symbols, provides a measured moral compass to soothe our ineffective outrage. 

Shonibare trained at Byam Shaw School of Art and then Goldsmiths College, graduating as part of the Young British Artists cohort. His accolades include participation in Documenta XI (2002), a Turner Prize nomination (2004), the fourth plinth commission in Trafalgar Square Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle (2010) and exhibitions worldwide including the Venice Biennale (2007) and Sharjah Biennial (2023). The artist was elected a Royal Academician in 2009 and appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019. He uses both honorifics ironically in his official artistic identity as a nod towards a critical stance on public imperial structures.   

The new works in the art exhibition explore the role of colonial statues, sites of detention and refuge, historical treatises and textiles that are pegged as “African” (though actually European) to highlight the complex present-day relations between Europe and its former colonies. With a room-sized installation of scaled-down replicas of public sculptures of iconic figures in British modern history, Decolonised Structures (2022-23) respond to the widespread debate in 2021 about the moral imperative against public memorials celebrating colonisers and slave traders. The seven sculptures of Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria, Herbert Kitchener, Robert Clive, Henry Bartle Frere, Charles James Napier and Frederick Roberts are embellished in Dutch wax patterns. The artist adds gold lead to heighten their presence, explaining, “I am making them more beautiful. I’m changing their character, or the history of their character, into something much more interesting.” By modifying the scale of the works he transforms their historical connotations and challenges their traditional narratives.

The distinctive colourfully printed West African textile is a well-established metaphor used by Shonibare to engage with the entangled histories between Africa and Europe, as well as his own identity as a British citizen with West African roots. First mass-produced in Holland in the 19^th century and inspired by Indonesian batik, the pattern was sold in West Africa and over time became entwined with the region's cultural landscape. Drawn to the fabric’s transnational history, the artist highlights how cultural signifiers are never as straightforward as they might seem. In his installation The War Library (2024) the artist explores the history of conflict; he binds 5270 books in self-designed multicoloured Dutch wax cotton print, 2700 of which are inscribed with gold lettering by names of wars and treatises that are the result of imperial ambitions. Not aiming to create a comprehensive list of conflicts, the work provides a chilling insight into the global and historical reach of colonisation and its role in shaping contemporary society and politics. With ongoing military actions and occupations in Africa and Asia, the work tells of how the history of the conflict is as old as the history of mankind and the profitability of war continues to fuel human catastrophe.

The central room of the exhibition, between the sculptures and the books, is a large darkened space with multiple pedestals, each displaying a black architectural model, lit from the inside and emitting a warm yellow glow. Sanctuary City (2024) includes scaled-down replicas of buildings worldwide that have provided shelter and refuge to persecuted and vulnerable groups. These range from temples in Greece and Japan to cathedrals in France, Syria and Ireland, shelters in Bangladesh and England, a hotel in Rwanda, a school in Trinidad and Tobago and international aid organisations in New York and London and were selected for their social role. Reflecting on the work, Shonibare describes shelter as “one of the most pressing political concerns right now”.

One room of the exhibition focuses on Shonibare’s social commitment to establishing the Guest Projects in East London in 2008 and the Guest Artist Space (G.A.S.) Foundation in Nigeria in 2022 comprising a residency centre in Lagos and a functioning farm in the countryside in Ijebu. Guest Projects offers artists, curators, producers and other creatives a free experimental space to develop ideas. Former studio manager and current Chair of Curatorial Programmes at the Foundation Anne Marie Pena outlined that the aim was “to create a non-institutional, non-hierarchical testing area across a range of art forms, where the possibility of failure could be celebrated and become an impetus for creation.” The G.A.S. residency supports critical practices across creative fields and the farmhouse focuses on dialogues across art, science, agriculture and ecology. The illustrated timeline and video on display provide insights into G.A.S.’s collaborative process through interviews with previous residents and an overview of the global network created thus far.

Suspended States provokes thought about the continuing ramifications of colonial history and the complex interplay of cultural identities.

‘Suspended States’ is on view at Serpentine Galleries from April 12 - September 1, 2024.