Yinka Shonibare’s installation is about the Great Migration – the exodus of six million African-Americans from the rural South to cities in the North, Midwest, and West from 1916 to 1970. The work consists of three figures carrying their worldly possessions in bags, suitcases, and nets as they climb a grand staircase, a metaphor for their upward movement geographically, economically, and socially. Each figure dons 19th-century attire in the artist’s signature Dutch Wax fabric, which symbolises the contradictions and complexities of cultural origins. These period costumes allude to the Victorian Era, when the foundations of the sharecropping system and Jim Crow laws – the source of suppression for Black Americans in the South – were laid. Moving Up captures the bravery of the Black Americans who refused disenfranchisement by seeking a new place within urban public life in the North and West. The perseverance and self-assertion of this generation shaped the contemporary American socioeconomic and cultural landscape.
Fibreglass mannequins, Dutch wax printed cotton textile, bespoke globes, brass, leather, hemp rope, paper, various toys, cotton, silk, steel, aluminium and painted wood. 230 × 360 × 250 cm © Yinka Shonibare CBE. All Rights Reserved, DACS / Artimage – Photographer: Stephen White & Co.
“The wild is far from unlimited. It is finite. It needs protecting.” – David Attenborough
James Cohan is pleased to present Earth Kids, was an exhibition of new sculptures by Yinka Shonibare CBE, on view from December 4 through January 23 at the gallery’s Lower East Side location at 291 Grand Street. This is the artist’s seventh solo exhibition at James Cohan.
To explore the exhibition in their Viewing Room, please click here.
Yinka Shonibare CBE mines the past to speak of the present. Rachel Kent, Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, explains that Shonibare engages with, “history and its legacy for future generations, of how we live in the present, and of cycles or patterns that repeat across time despite their often destructive consequences. In this way he pricks the consciences of those who encounter his art, using beauty and seduction instead of words as his chosen weapons.”
In Earth Kids, Shonibare makes a connection between the history of colonial domination and humankind’s domination of the natural world and exploitation of its limited resources. The quartet of child-scaled sculptures champion the next generation of environmentalists fighting for climate justice—including young activists, such as Greta Thunberg—who have thrown a spotlight on the failings of previous generations of policy makers. These works, Shonibare states, are a call to action to protect the planet for our children.
More from James Cohan (linked).
and Yinka Shonibare CBE (linked).
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (b. 1962, in London) is well known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. Working in painting, sculpture, photography, film, and installation, Shonibare’s work examines race, class, and the artificial construct of cultural identity.
And a few other favourite previous “Globe Heads” created for Yinka Shonibare below.
