Yinka Shonibare CBE: ‘Suspended States’
Britain is littered with symbols of death and exploitation; not hidden away shamefully, but raised up, celebrated and gloried. Public sculptures of controversial historical figures are everywhere, and now they’re in the Serpentine too, because Yinka Shonibare CBE has put them there. The Nigerian-British art megastar has filled the gallery with recreations of statues of Churchill, Kitchener, Queen Victoria and Clive of India. But they’re scaled down, their power diminished, minimised, undermined. They’re puny now, smaller than you, weak. And of course, they’re covered in Shonibare’s signature Dutch wax print (colourful fabric inspired by Indonesian printing traditions, traded by the Dutch, ubiquitous in Africa, and now used by Shonibare as visual shorthand for the complex history of colonialism). This is what Yinka Shonibare CBE – that Commander of the British Empire title matters – does, what he’s always done: highlight, tear apart and subvert the legacy of British imperialism with directness, colour and wit. The debate around public statues of figures like Churchill and Clive – whose accomplishments came at a terrible human cost, who caused so much pain to the people over whom they ruled – has been raging for years now, and it feels like the flames of its anger abated a while ago. But Shonibare’s installation is a clever, almost joyful reappropriation of historical pain, injustice and trauma. It makes for grim if colourful viewing Shonibare has filled the central gallery w