Deep Blue

Artist Yinka Shonibare (British, born 1962)

Date1997

Mediumemulsion, acrylic on textiles

Dimensionsoverall: 250 x 250 cm (98 7/16 x 98 7/16 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCharlotte E.W. Buffington Fund

Terms

Object number1998.122

DescriptionTwenty-five panels (each 30 cm. square ) of “Africa-print” patterned Dutch wax fabric are installed in a 5 x 5 grid on a wall painted deep blue in a 250 cm. square. The color palette is composed mainly of bright blues, pinks, and yellows. The artist supplied a color paint patch and layout instructions for the installation.
Label TextYinka Shonibare’s dual nationality (a British-born Nigerian who spent his youth in Nigeria before returning to the U.K. at 17) is central to his art and the questions it provokes about authentic origins and ethnic myths, both cultural and aesthetic. Consciously hybrid in nature, Deep Blue was not painted on traditionally stretched canvas but on panels of patterned fabric. Although structured with a nod to modernism (a grid on a rectangular expanse of “deep blue”), the abstract painted passages are rooted in the traditional designs visible in the exposed cloth. This entangled relation is echoed in the complex origins of the “African-print” cloth (a Dutch wax fabric inspired by Indonesian batik, manufactured in the Netherlands and Britain, and marketed in the 19th century to West African buyers), which has become, ironically, a signifier of authentic African identity. It is precisely this sense of ambiguity and hybridism that drew Shonibare to this material. ProvenanceStephen Friedman Gallery, London

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