Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch.

Yinka Shonibare Double Dutch

Edited by Jaap Guldemond and Gabriele Mackert, with Barbera van Kooij

Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2004. 160 pp., 75 color and 25 b/w photos, biography, bibliography. $39.95 softcover.

In just over a decade of artistic practice, Yinka Shonibare has captured and retained the attention of the contemporary Western art scene with his eye-catching headless mannequins and engaging photo narratives. This London-based artist of Yoruba heritage addresses contemporary issues of globalization and the colonial past with a light-heartedness that has won him universal appeal.

Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch contains the most comprehensive look at the artist's work to date. Lavishly illustrated with works spanning Shonibare's career (1994-2004), the colorful exhibit catalogue effectively reproduces the experience of coming face to face with Shonibare's whimsical and vibrant works. Punctuated by a diverse assortment of scholarly articles, the catalogue is a treat for the intellect as well as the eye.

The collection of seven articles six essays and one interview--use an assortment of scholarly approaches to explicate elements in Shonibare's works. The contributors, who focus on the impact of sociohistorical elements, possess a wide range of expertise relevant to understanding Shonibare's complex artistry. As a whole, the articles provide insight into the dominant cultures that are incorporated in Shonibare's works: traditional Nigerian, modern Western, and Victorian. While each article expands on the debate about categorizing Shonibare, the compilation provides a compelling synthesis of his diasporic identity.

Hugo Bongers and Gerald Matt introduce the catalogue by describing Shonibare as "an example of the increasing hybridization of the once unequivocal cultural or national definitions that has fundamentally altered the style of associating and dealing with culture in these cosmopolitan times" (p. 8). The exhibit and accompanying catalogue are not meant to be a retrospective, but instead focus on works chosen according to the principal themes of Shonibare's career. Though not explicitly identified by Bongers and Matt, the principal themes discussed include an exploration of colonialism and globalization, particularly the historical and contemporary relationship between Britain and Nigeria, and a preoccupation with the Victorian aristocracy. Illustrations, therefore, focus on Shonibare's Afro-Victorian mannequins, decapitated and dressed in sumptuous costumes fashioned from Dutch Wax print fabric, and photographs featuring Shonibare in the role of an African dandy.

Manthia Diawara's essay analyzes Shonibare's textile works, exploring the political and "Africanizing" effects of his use of Dutch Wax prints. Diawara examines Shonibare's works as a combination of historical and contemporary signifiers, postcolonial references to the colonial past of Afro-European relationships, embodied in cloth. This "transtextuality," Diawara asserts, allows Shonibare to explore and challenge stereotypes, implying a multipilicity of identity.

Rather than adding to the glut of interviews focused on Shonibare's connection to Africa, Jaap Guldemond and Gabriele Mackert, editors of the catalogue and concept designers of the exhibit, question Shonibare on the European influences in his art. The inclusion of this interview adds greatly to the existing literature on Shonibare by looking at that which is not "African" about an artist who has been quoted as saying "I don't give a toss about Africa." In this conversation, Shonibare discusses his work in relation to feminist and minimalist traditions in contemporary art and outlines his investigations into the Victorian era. Shonibare also explains the importance of the seductive quality of his works and his use of strategic fragmentation.

Expanding on his extensive publications on Shonibare's use of textiles, John Picton con tributes an article that, for the first time, explores the iconography of the fabrics employed. This contribution is significant in furthering the visual analysis of Shonibare's exploitation of textiles. Reading the textiles themselves, Picton analyzes the relationship between the prints and their meaning and historical use in Yoruba culture. He reveals the messages coded within the "African" textiles, proposing an added discourse he asserts is visible to Africans but hidden from the average European viewer.

In a previously published article, Angela McRobbie discusses Shonibare's 1998 photographic narrative Diary of a Victorian Dandy. This short article examines the theoretical implications of Shonibare's insertion of his own body into genre scenes referencing the Victorian aristocracy, focusing on the compelling dialogue between the historical and the contemporary. McRobbie's interpretation explains not only Shonibare's appropriation of the historical Victorian world but addresses the tools by which Shonibare rewrites history in a distinctly postcolonial viewpoint.

Peter Bailey's contribution to the catalogue outlines the pastimes of the Victorian aristocracy, a necessary inclusion for a complete understanding of Shonibare's works, which are frequently in direct dialogue with the Victorian era. Bailey, a specialist in modern British social and cultural history, does not address Shonibare's work directly, but his essay serves to illuminate the narrative of the exhibit.

Onyema Offoedu-Okeke explores the effect of Nigerian political history on Shonibare's work. Arguing effectively that "Shonibare's African identity is clearly the main instigator of a debate marked by a foreign intrusion into the otherwise regulated procedures of English art," Offoedu-Okeke analyzes the intellectual struggle of the Nigerian educated elite in balancing the "traditional" and the "modern" rather than citing specific works by Shonibare that reflect this intellectual relationship to Shonibare's Nigerian heritage (p. 108). In explaining what he describes as a "genetically Nigerian" phenomenon, Offoedu-Okeke successfully links Shonibare with fellow Nigerian diasporic artists, implying that this theme pervades the work of all modern artists of Nigerian origin, including Uzo Egonu, Sokari Douglas Camp, and Chris Ofili, but fails to examine the effects of their geographical dislocation from Nigeria on their art.

The final essay, by Achille Mbembe, constitutes a theoretical discussion of Africa, a "geographical accident" that has developed into an essential signifier, and African identity, polarized into the two discourses of "nativism and Afro-radicalism" (p. 122). Mbembe essentially summarizes Shonibare's conceptual framework, identifying and discussing the multiple histories of international relations affecting contemporary Africans.

This elegantly compiled publication is filled with full-page reproductions of many of Shonibare's most famous works. A biography chronicles Shonibare's artistic career, including schooling, solo shows, group exhibitions, and awards and residencies, and a brief bibliography of related publications concludes the catalogue. Though the articles and images are not interdependent, the catalogue combines a wide range of excellent sources and illustrations that function well independently.