Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States review – a 'stunning' show

colonial leaders, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Decolonised Structures

Yinka Shonibare CBE's Decolonised Structures offers a colourful take

(Image credit: Stephen White & Co./ Stephen White & Co. / © Yinka Shonibare CBE)

In the 1990s, the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare had an "epiphany", said Ben Luke in the Evening Standard. He discovered that the colourful batik fabrics sold in Brixton Market, which he had always associated with West Africa, were in fact the product of complicated historical exchanges. They were based on Indonesian textiles shipped to Europe and thence "industrially produced" in Holland: they only arrived in Africa through colonial commerce.

Ever since, he has used this material to create work that explores the complexities of imperial history, and to question notions of "cultural authenticity". He has wrapped effigies of figures from British history in batik, and used the fabric to create "wind sculptures" – sails which evoke the principal motor of the slave trade. His trick, however, is to make it all look bright and joyous.

This new show at the Serpentine brings together a number of recent installations and sculptures, all using his "signature fabric". It touches on everything from slavery and colonialism to global warming and the refugee crisis.

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It's "classic Yinka" – a show marrying "immediate visual allure" to "disquieting meaning". Shonibare's work is always "beautifully distinct", said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Even if he hasn't literally made these pieces himself (he has been disabled since adolescence), they are unmistakably his creations. It's a blessing and a curse, however. A work entitled "The War Library" sees 5,000-plus volumes on conflicts past and present bound in Shonibare's trademark textiles and exhibited in a huge bookshelf. "Stunning" as it is, he has made very similar pieces before. And it works in terms of rather obvious generalisations: the artist is "against colonialism, racism, imperialism, war". Elsewhere, he has made fibreglass copies of statues depicting figures from British imperial history, including Queen Victoria and Churchill, in his "gorgeously recognisable" batik patterns – again, a tactic he has deployed before. You're left feeling that he has been doing exactly the same thing for 30 years, and that "nothing – and I mean nothing – has changed".

Perhaps that's because it's still so relevant, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. By turning "patriotic statues" into objects that would be unimaginable to the people they commemorate, he has created "a witty, weirdly beautiful conclusion" to the furious debate around public sculpture that has raged since 2020. The conclusion to the show, "Sanctuary City", is especially "moving". Scale models of Aleppo Cathedral, the UN headquarters and the Bibby Stockholm barge, among others, are lit from within to reveal interiors patterned with his trademark fabrics. All these sanctuaries are at best ambiguous symbols – yet they "glow with the idea of protecting vulnerable people". We should be thankful for Shonibare – a gentle artist who "encourages us to think a bit".