Boy on a Globe, 2008
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Mannequin, Dutch wax printed cotton textile and globe
Shonibare references the history of brightly coloured Dutch wax fabrics to comment on colonisation, hybridity, and authenticity. The fabric originated in Indonesia before being produced by the Dutch in Manchester and sold for mass consumption in Africa. He began using the material in the 1990s after one of his teachers commented that Shonibare, an artist of African origin, was not making ‘authentic’ African art.
Boy on a Globe addresses the ways in which humanity has exerted power over the world it occupies, often with disastrous consequences. The globe, yellow in tone and reddening in certain sections to indicate warming, is a dual symbol for environmental disaster and the redrawing of territory under Empire. The boy is perilously perched, as though about to fall. This sense of precarity offers a visual manifestation of the deconstruction of colonisation and empire, countering the ideas of stability and linear, forward progression that justified colonial missions.*
From the exhibition
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art
(February – May 2024)
Textiles are vital to our lives. We are swaddled in them when we’re born, we wrap our bodies in them every day, and we’re shrouded in them when we die.
What does it mean to imagine a needle, a loom or a garment as a tool of resistance? How can textiles unpack, question, unspool, unravel and therefore reimagine the world around us?
Since the 1960s, textiles have become increasingly present in artistic practices for subversive ends. This is significant as the medium has been historically undervalued within the hierarchies of Western art history. Textiles have been considered ‘craft’ in opposition to definitions of ‘fine art’, gendered as feminine and marginalised by scholars and the art market. The 50 international artists in this show challenge these classifications, harnessing the medium to speak powerfully about intimate, everyday stories as well as wider socio-political narratives, teasing out these entangled concerns through a stitch, a knot, a braid, through the warp and the weft. These artists defy traditional expectations of textiles, embracing abstraction or figuration to push the boundaries of the medium. They draw on its material history to reveal ideas relating to gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade.
Rather than dictating a chronological history of fibre art, the exhibition is organised in thematic dialogues between artists — across both generations and geographies — to explore how artists have embraced textiles to critique or push up against regimes of power. Some artists work alone with solitary, near-meditative practices, while others reflect the shared approach that the medium often invites, working with collaborators in acts of community and solidarity. Spanning intimate hand-crafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations, these artworks communicate multi-layered stories about lived experience, invoking the vital issues embedded in fibre and thread.
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken at the Barbican Centre
Boy on a Globe, 2008
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA
Mannequin, Dutch wax printed cotton textile and globe
Shonibare references the history of brightly coloured Dutch wax fabrics to comment on colonisation, hybridity, and authenticity. The fabric originated in Indonesia before being produced by the Dutch in Manchester and sold for mass consumption in Africa. He began using the material in the 1990s after one of his teachers commented that Shonibare, an artist of African origin, was not making ‘authentic’ African art.
Boy on a Globe addresses the ways in which humanity has exerted power over the world it occupies, often with disastrous consequences. The globe, yellow in tone and reddening in certain sections to indicate warming, is a dual symbol for environmental disaster and the redrawing of territory under Empire. The boy is perilously perched, as though about to fall. This sense of precarity offers a visual manifestation of the deconstruction of colonisation and empire, countering the ideas of stability and linear, forward progression that justified colonial missions.*
From the exhibition
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art
(February – May 2024)
Textiles are vital to our lives. We are swaddled in them when we’re born, we wrap our bodies in them every day, and we’re shrouded in them when we die.
What does it mean to imagine a needle, a loom or a garment as a tool of resistance? How can textiles unpack, question, unspool, unravel and therefore reimagine the world around us?
Since the 1960s, textiles have become increasingly present in artistic practices for subversive ends. This is significant as the medium has been historically undervalued within the hierarchies of Western art history. Textiles have been considered ‘craft’ in opposition to definitions of ‘fine art’, gendered as feminine and marginalised by scholars and the art market. The 50 international artists in this show challenge these classifications, harnessing the medium to speak powerfully about intimate, everyday stories as well as wider socio-political narratives, teasing out these entangled concerns through a stitch, a knot, a braid, through the warp and the weft. These artists defy traditional expectations of textiles, embracing abstraction or figuration to push the boundaries of the medium. They draw on its material history to reveal ideas relating to gender, labour, value, ecology, ancestral knowledge, and histories of oppression, extraction and trade.
Rather than dictating a chronological history of fibre art, the exhibition is organised in thematic dialogues between artists — across both generations and geographies — to explore how artists have embraced textiles to critique or push up against regimes of power. Some artists work alone with solitary, near-meditative practices, while others reflect the shared approach that the medium often invites, working with collaborators in acts of community and solidarity. Spanning intimate hand-crafted pieces to large-scale sculptural installations, these artworks communicate multi-layered stories about lived experience, invoking the vital issues embedded in fibre and thread.
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken at the Barbican Centre