NORVAL Foundation Unveils ne Wind Sculpture

YINKA SHONIBARE

WIND SCULPTURE REVEALED

At Norval Foundation, in a first for South Africa

Yinka Shonibare CBE exhibition

A is now open at Norval Foundation, Cape Town’s hottest new art destination. Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE traces the works of the British-Nigerian artist best known for his monumental Wind Sculptures. These sculptures are displayed in spectacular locations worldwide, from Central Park in New York to Trafalgar Square in London and now at the inaugural Cape Town exhibition.

A central piece of this exhibition is the monumental Wind Sculpture (SG)III, recently acquired by Norval Foundation, which will be permanently installed in the Sculpture Garden. “I am thrilled that Wind Sculpture (SG)

III has been acquired by Norval Foundation, bringing visibility to my work in Africa,” says Shonibare.”The principle of this acquisition will resonate far beyond the institution itself. I can’t tell you how proud I am.”

This exhibition brings together a series of Yinka Shonibare CBE work including sculptures, photographs and a major installation, created between 2008 and 2018, all connected by the golden thread of Dutch Wax fabric. Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE takes as its starting point an appreciation for the fabric’s materiality and the conceptual as well as historical meanings associated with it.

Another highlight of this exhibition is Shonibare’s African Library (2018), the most recent iteration

Right: Yinka Shonibare CBE, Wind Sculpture SG (III), 2018, Steel armature with hand painted fibreglass resin cast, 700 x 254 x 200 cm Above: Michele Mathison, Volition, 2017, Steel, 375 x 95 x 162cm

60WWW.ARTGO.CO.ZA

120

WWW.ARTGO.CO.ZA Wim Botha, Study for the Epic Mundane, 2013, Books, wood, steel rods and hardware

Wim Botha, Study for the Epic Mundane, 2013, Books, wood, steel rods and hardware

64WWW.ARTGO.CO.ZA

Left: Nandipha Mntambo, Ophelia, Brass. Above: Victor Ehikhamenor, Isimagodo (The Unknowable), 2016, Enamel paint and steel, 450 x 200 x 150 cm

of his library series honouring first or second generation immigrants who have shaped a country’s social, political or cultural life. Approximately 4,900 books, covered in Dutch Wax fabric, are emblazoned with the names of immigrants in gold on the spines of key books. African Library includes a reading area where biographical details of these notable Africans can be accessed along with archival footage of leaders of African independence movements.

Alongside African Library, Shonibare’s five part photographic series Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (2008) is included in Trade Winds: Yinka Shonibare CBE. Drawing upon the eighteenth-century Spanish artist Francisco Goya’s satiric etching of the same name, which is part of Goya’s seminal Los Caprichos (1797- 1799) suite of etchings, Shonibare’s works are similarly critical of humanity’s ability to be truly rational.

Each of Shonibare’s five photographs relate to a specific continent, acting as personifications of these land masses. Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Asia) for example features a figure of African descent who is attired in Dutch Wax fabric.

Brett Murray, Again Again, 2015, Bronze, 250x 80x260cm

Shonibare reminds us that within the context of globalisation, peoples and cultures move across the world, influencing and shaping one another – unsettling simplistic understandings of identity, place and culture.

The two figurative sculptures included in this exhibition, Boy Balancing Knowledge II (2016) and Butterfly Kid (Girl) IV (2017), while playful, nonetheless suggest significant subjects for the next generation: escape from an environmentally compromised planet, and the weight and precariousness of our systems of knowledge.

“Yinka Shonibare’s aesthetically and conceptually diverse body of artwork emphasises the human figure as a site of investigation, which sculpturally results in a chimeric mythical figure, clad in the wings of a butterfly and globe for a head in Butterfly Kid (Girl) IV,”says Portia Malatjie, Adjunct Curator.

As locals and visitors alike prepare to celebrate art during the Cape Town Art Fair, be sure to visit Cape Town’s newest art destination Norval Foundation and experience this powerful exhibition by Yinka Shonibare CBE in a first for South Africa.

66WWW.ARTGO.CO.ZA