© Yinka Shonibare / BONO. Photo: © Kristina A. Kvåle / Ekebergparken
Material (SG) IV
- Date 2023
- Unveiled 2026
- Material Glassfiber, hand-painted surface
- Weight 1500kg
- Dimensions 400x235x200cm
«My work comments on power, or the deconstruction of power, and I tend to use notions of excess as a way to represent that power - deconstructing things within that.»
Portrait of Yinka Shonibare. Image © Yinka Shonibare and Tom Jamieson
Yinka Shonibare
(b. London, United Kingdom, 1962)
Yinka Shonibare is a British Nigerian artist based in London. He studied Fine Art at the Byam Shaw School of Art i London, and holds a MFA from Goldsmiths (1991). His interdisiplinary practice includes sculpture, public art, works on paper, photography and video. As an artist, Shonibare is particularily known for his use of the Dutch wax print - a print that is often associated with West-African culture, but originated from Indonesia, being imported to Europe by the Dutch colonist power who introduced the print on the West-African market. Shonibare is an internationally renowned artist, with works represented at institutions and galleries all over the world. In 2004 he was nominated for the Turner prize, and his first public art commission, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, was exhibited at the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square in 2010. In 2019 he was given the title «Commander of the Order of the British Empire» and he received the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award in 2021.
In his series of wind-scultpures, Shonibare turns his attention towards movement itself. Here we are presented with large, abstract sculptures, covered in colourful wax print. The strong coloured sculptures’s undulating and folded forms and shapes are remindant of scarves - or sails - that have been caught in the wind. Here it is the motion itself that is important - the motion of the shape and textile, serving as a metaphore for the motion of humans through times. As the artist points out, culture is not created in a vacuum - but through the movement of people. The work Material (SG) IV (2023) is part of this series of sculptures.
Storytelling - and how narratives and identity is created, shaped and developed - is central in Shonibare’s art. His use of the Dutch wax print creates a dialogue with the history and the traditional narratives surrounding colonialism and post-colonialism. With a focus on globalisation and migration as historically carrying elements for culture creation and development - he is able to explore, in a playful and satirical manner, how empirialism, and the innate powers structures of empirialism, have led to the development of the multi-cultural society we live in today.
Interview with the artist (norwegian)
Guided tours
Experience Material (SG) IV and many of the other artworks in the collection with our art mediators. We offer guided tours for private groups all year round.