COPENHAGEN, july 3rd 2013 PRESS RELEASE

Yinka Shonibare MBE: FABRIC-ATION

21. september – 24. november 2013

Autumn at GL STRAND offers one of the absolutely major names on the international contemporary art scene. British-Nigerian Yinka Shonibare is currently arousing the enthusiasm of the public and reviewers in England. Now the Danish public will have a chance to make the acquaintance of the artist’s fascinating universe of headless soldiers and Victorian ballerinas in his first major solo show in Scandinavia.

Over the part 15 years Yinka Shonibare has created an iconic oeuvre of headless mannequins that bring to life famous moments of history and art history. With great commitment and equal degrees of seriousness, wit and humour he has mounted an assault on the colonialism of the Victorian era and its parallels in Thatcher’s Britain. In recent years he has widened the scope of his subjects to include global news, injustices and complications in a true cornucopia of media, for example film, photography, painting, sculpture and installation – all represented in the show at GL STRAND.

FABRIC-ATION mainly gathers works from recent years, as well as a brand new work created for the exhibition, Copenhagen Girl with a Bullet in her Head. The subjects include Admiral Nelson and his key position in British colonialism, the significance of globalization for the formation of modern man’s identity, multiculturalism, global food production and the revolutions of the past few years in the Arab world. In other words, Shonibare is able, through an original and captivating universe, to present us with the huge complexity that defines our time, as well as the underlying history.

The title of the exhibition refers to Shonibare’s use of colourful patterned fabrics in his art; fabrics that are associated with Africa, but which have their origin in Holland and were intended for the Indonesian market, and which, typically for Shonibare, illustrate that things are rarely what they seem at first glance.

FABRIC-ATION was shown in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England, in the period February – September 2013.

For more information contact curator Anne Kielgast / [email protected] / + 45 33 36 02 67

Press meeting on Friday 20th of September 11 AM. All pictures: Yinka Shonibare, MBE, For interviews with the artist and other information, from the exhibition FABRIC-ATION, please contact head of communications 2013 Sibbe Aggergaard, +45 33 36 02 61 / [email protected]. PRESS IMAGES from: www.glstrand.dk/presserum

GL STRAND / GAMMEL STRAND 48, DK-1202 CPH K / T +45 33 36 02 60 / E [email protected] / W GLSTRAND.DK Yinka Shonibare MBE

The English-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE is known for his spectacular human-sized sculptures dressed in colourful patterned robes, combining typical Victorian costumes with the characteristic oilcloth textiles we associate with West Africa. Later he has worked with a wide range of media such as painting, photography, film and performance art, and a char¬ac¬teristic aesthetic idiom that disturbs and challenges our view of a number of historical and contemporary world events. In 2009 Yinka Shonibare was awarded the honour ”Mem¬ber of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire”, a title that he has incorporated in his name, Yinka Shonibare MBE. By integrating the order of knighthood MBE in his name he has chosen, quite in the spirit of his work, to play on the ambivalence in his artistic work with the British Establishment and England’s past as a colonial power.

YINKA SHONIBARE MBE. Photo copyright Stephen Friedman Gallery, . Yinka Shonibare was born in 1962 in London. At the age of 3 he moved to Lagos, , before returning to London to study art, first at the Byam College of Art and later at Gold¬smiths College, where he took his MA in 1991. He participated in among other events the epoch-making exhibition Sensation: Young British Art from the Saatchi Collection in 1997, and later at Dokumenta X and the Venice Biennale in 2001, before being nominated for the pres¬tigious in 2004.

After suffering a paralysis of the back as a teenager, Yinka Shonibare lives with a handicap which along with his ethnic and cultural past forms a point of departure for his artistic acti¬vity. Describing himself as a ‘hybrid’, Shonibare grapples with his history and investigates how colonialism forms cultural identity in a globalized world typified by great political and social inequality. With equal degrees of humour and commitment he is able to comment on complex political themes in an aesthetic idiom that both captivates and seduces the viewer.

Yinka Shonibare MBE: FABRIC-ATION, 2013, YSP, Jonty Wilde

GL STRAND / GAMMEL STRAND 48, DK-1202 CPH K / T +45 33 36 02 60 / E [email protected] / W GLSTRAND.DK Yinka Shonibare has participated in several group exhibitions and has exhibited at some of the world’s leading art museums, for example the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the in New York, the in Washington DC, the Miami Art Museum, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Nouveau Musée National in Monaco. In 2010 he was commissioned to decorate the Fourth Plinth in with one of his most talked-about projects; Nelson’s Ship in A Bottle, which is a faithful copy on a scale of

Yinka Shonibare MBE: Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, Trafalgar Square. Photo © Stephen Friedman Gallery. 1:30 of the British Admiral Lord Nelson’s famous ship HMS Victory.

In Yinka Shonibare’s work the sails of Nelson’s ship are made of brightly coloured African oilcloth textiles and enclosed in a large glass bottle sealed with a cork. The work enters into a direct dialogue with Trafalgar Square’s iconic figure and England’s national hero Lord Nelson, who won a great victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, but was later killed on his own ship HMS Victory. Nelson’s Ship in A Bottle is the first commission by an African artist for the Fourth Plinth.

Yinka Shonibare is represented in collections in among other places the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum Of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Tate Collection, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the of Modern Art, Rome; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Arts Council Collection, London; the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; and the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. Yinka Shonibare MBE: FABRIC-ATION, 2013, YSP, Jonty Wilde Throughout his career Yinka Shonibare has won a succession of honours including Fellow of the University of the Arts 2012, of the 2010, the Fourth Plinth Award Nominee 2008, an honorary doctorate 2007, the MBE 2005, IASPIS 2004, Fellow of Gold¬smiths College 2003, the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize 1999, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Visual Artists 1998 and the Barclays Young Artists Award 1992.

Yinka Shonibare MBE: FABRIC-ATION, 2013, YSP, Jonty Wilde

GL STRAND / GAMMEL STRAND 48, DK-1202 CPH K / T +45 33 36 02 60 / E [email protected] / W GLSTRAND.DK YINKA SHONIBARE MBE

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2013 FOCUS, Yinka Shonibare, MBE, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, USA FABRIC-ATION, Kunstforeningen GL STRAND, København, DK FABRIC-ATION, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK POP!, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK

2012 IMAGINES AS TRUTH, San Diego Art Museum, San Diego, USA INVASION, ESCAPE, Aliens do it right!, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney, Australia ADDIO DEL PASSATO, James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA

2010-2011 El FUTURO DEL PASADO, Alcalá 31 Centros de Arte, Madrid, Spain HUMAN CULTURE, Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, Israel Museum, Jerusalem YINKA SHONIBARE, MBE, Sculpture, Photography and Film, Western Michigan University, Michigan, USA LOOKING UP, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco BEFORE AND AFTER MODERNISM, , Rex Vicat Cole, Yinka Shonibare, MBE, Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, England

2009 WILLY LOMAN: The Rise and Fall, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England PARTY TIME: RE-IMAGINE AMERICA - A Centennial Commission by Yinka Shonibare MBE, Newark Museum, USA A FLYING MACHINE FOR EVERY MAN, Woman and Child & other Astonishing Works, Santa Barbara Museum of Art YINKA SHONIBARE, MBE, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney, Australia; touring to Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA and National Museum of Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2013 OUT OF FASHION, Gl Holtegaard, Holte, Denmark; traveling to Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, DK PIVOT POINTS, 15 Years & Counting: 15th Anniversary Collection, MOCA, North Miami, USA BRILIANT DISGUISE, Masks and Other Transformations, Contemporary Art Centre, Louisiana, USA EARTH MATTERS, Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC USA

2012-2013 THE PROGESS OF LOVE, Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Nigeria; touring to The Menil Collection, Texas, USA; The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, Missouri, USA THE DESIRE FOR FREEDOM, Art in Europe since 1945, Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2012 HAPPENING TO BE, Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, London, England THE DESIRE FOR FREEDOM: Art in Europe since 1945, German Historical Museum, Berlin, Germany ENCOUNTERS: Conflict, Dialogue, and Discovery, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, USA MIGRATION: Journeys into British Art, Tate Britain, London, England

2011 HUMAN NATURE, Contemporary Art from the Collection, LACMA, Los Angeles, California, USA THE AFRICAN CONTINIUUM, the United Nations, New York, USA SPIRIT AND SPACE, Collection Sandretto Rebaudengo, Fundación Banco Santander, Madrid, Spain THE WAY WE ARE NOW, Selections from the 21c Collection, Cincinnati Art Museum, USA

2010 NELSON’S SHIP IN A BOTTLE, Fourth Plinth Commission, Trafalgar Square, London, UK

GL STRAND / GAMMEL STRAND 48, DK-1202 CPH K / T +45 33 36 02 60 / E [email protected] / W GLSTRAND.DK