Yinka Shonibare CBE Planets In My Head

Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head

After being closed for renovations, the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park sculpture galleries are reopening with the major exhibition Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head. Shonibare is among the most distinguished artists living and working in the world today. A British artist of Nigerian heritage, his titles include Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) and Royal Academician (RA). In collaboration with the artist and his studio in London, the Stephen Friedman Gallery, James Cohan Gallery, Cristea Roberts Gallery, the Speed Art Museum, and private collectors, Meijer Gardens is mounting one of the largest exhibitions of works by Shonibare ever presented in the United States.

Shonibare is among the most exemplary and iconic artists working from a postcolonial perspective. Born in London, England, and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, he grew up bilingual and bicultural, experiencing the late British Empire from multiple, often contradictory perspectives. This made him a selfdeclared “postcolonial hybrid” who equally claims his heritage in British Victorianism and Nigerian Yoruba traditions. Cultural hybridity attracted Shonibare to the history of colorful wax fabric sold as typical African design at London markets. He later learned it was originally developed by Dutch merchants in response to Indonesian batik—a wax-resist dyeing technique applied to cloth. Only after it failed to sell on the Indonesian market did the Dutch begin to export it to West Africa, where it was highly valued and eventually embraced as authentically African.

Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head is a journey into the artist’s imagination. Taken from a sculpture group featuring globes with planetary constellations, the title is a metaphor for Shonibare’s inventiveness in responding to the world around him. Following the path of his imagination can be dizzying, yet rewarding at the same time. One can find magic and beauty in the endless possibilities of color patterns and design, yet with these whimsical and staged sculptures and sculptural environments Shonibare expresses his concern in topics such as Victorian excess, climate change, and migration. Hidden within the artist’s playfulness is often a warning about our future or a surprising history reinterpretation. While the concepts of his sculptures speak to Shonibare’s concerns with postcolonial revisionism and social justice, they always offer elegant and delightful visual experiences.

One must see this exhibition to understand the breadth of Shonibare’s vision. The Dutch wax fabric he adopted as a unique form of postcolonial expression covers many of the fiberglass sculptures as textiles or as patterns that are painted on. The artist consistently looks at the past as a resource for contemporary revision and reinterpretation, from classical Greco-Roman statues to Enlightenment philosophers and African masks referenced in modern art. Several sculptures feature children and the challenges they face, whether climate change or education. Included are more recent works in embroidery and collage, featuring distorted images of people, animals, and plants Western European medieval map makers invented to represent nonEuropean creatures. Of special note: A new work Shonibare designed for this exhibition, titled Food Man, is inspired by West Michigan’s history as a place of fruit orchards and other farm-grown crops.

This exhibition is the culmination of a relationship between Meijer Gardens and the artist, which began when we acquired Shonibare’s Farnese Hercules and Aphrodite de Fréjus—gifts of Fred and Lena Meijer now displayed in the Welcome Center. Exhibition planning in conversation with the artist and his studio continued remotely throughout the pandemic. In the process, we acquired the beautiful sculpture Bronze, an abstract form resembling a piece of fabric tossed by the wind. Bronze is a gift of Fred and Lena Meijer and The Holly Peterson Foundation. The new sculpture will premiere in the exhibition and later find a more permanent home in one of our outdoor spaces.

Essay by Jochen Wierich, PhD, Assistant Curator & Researcher

April 1–October 23 Programming

Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop with Mursalata Muhammad Saturday, April 16, 1:30–3 pm Registration required

Gallery Walk led by Amber Oudsema Saturday, May 14, 11 am–12 pm

Fashion in Contemporary Art (Lecture) Suzanne Eberle, PhD Saturday, June 18, 11 am–12 pm

Abundance and Scarcity: Yinka Shonibare CBE and Food Justice (Lecture) Jochen Wierich, PhD Saturday, July 16, 11 am–12 pm

Complex Embodiment: Yinka Shonibare and Disability (Lecture) Jessica Cooley Saturday, September 3/10, 11 am–12 pm

Yinka Shonibare and the Pan-African Imagination (Lecture) Antawan Bryd Saturday, October 1, 11 am–12 pm

See detailed descriptions on page 19 or online at MeijerGardens.org/calendar

Member Programming

Society Preview March 30, 6–8 pm

General Member Opening March 31, 6–8 pm

Sponsors

Bill Padnos & Margy Kaye The Louis and Helen Padnos Foundation The Meijer Foundation Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Foundation Botanic and Sculpture Societies of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, a Partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts