Yinka Shonibare at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen

Art in America, Dec, 2004 by Lilly Wei

Raised in Lagos and now living in London, Yinka Shonibare is known for his eye-catching, good-looking, double-edged, figural tableaux, often using headless mannequinlike figures for his dramatis personae. Referring to specific Western cultural icons, Shonibare recycles them, introducing an African look. Substituting shades of brown for pink and white flesh tones, Shonibare garbs his figures in elegant 18th- and 19th-century English costumes cut, however, from traditional African cloth, with its bold, distinctive colors and patterns. He presents his art-and-fashion show--his signature browned-and-gowned installations--slyly, with humor as well as bite.

Ironically, the classic African batik that Shonibare deploys so effectively is mass-produced in England and Holland, then sold in West Africa, where it is preferred to the native product as a sign of status and African pride. Shonibare's socio-politico-economic critique is ultimately based on exchange and circularity, on issues of identity, tradition and trade, a purposely ambiguous, reversible enterprise that can be read several ways, highlighting how Africans have been affected and afflicted by colonials.

"Double Dutch," as Shonibare's five-year mini-retrospective was titled, was his first solo show in the Netherlands, and in the spacious upper gallery of the museum's contemporary wing it showed to advantage: five installations plus a number of single figures and objects, round paintings and two imposing photographic sequences. One of the latter, from 2001, was based on Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, the other, The Diary of a Victorian Dandy, from 1998, suggests Hogarth's Rake's Progress, but with a black gallant surrounded by whites on his round of debauchery. The most ambitious installation, occupying center stage, was the spirited Gallantry & Criminal Conversation (2002), previously seen at Documenta 11. Five life-sized (or nearly so) headless couples and three-somes were placed around the perimeter of a large platform, surrounded by an array of band-boxes and trunks with a painted wooden carriage suspended overhead. The couples were all engaged in various indecorous sexual acts while fully clothed, the long 19th-century skirts of the women beautifully pleated, tucked and pushed aside in discreet disarray.

Another success was Hound (2000), in which batik-dressed figures were chasing after dogs who were pursuing the fox in a hunt. The Swing (after Fragonard), 2001, looked particularly charming here, framed by the large glass windows, the real trees outside a backdrop for the freestanding, artificial tree inside, the headless, heedless girl in full swing, dress billowing, one flirtatious shoe flying upward, held delicately, perpetually, in midair. While Shonibare's line of clothing may eventually become too familiar, his exhilarating execution and narrative remain irresistible.