Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth's Council FOCUS season begins with two solo exhibitions to run concurrently, one featuring the work of British/Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE.
Shonibare explores colonialism and the intricate ways in which it has shaped, and continues to shape, cultural identities. He is well known for his life-size sculptural tableaux featuring staged, headless mannequins dressed in elaborate period garments. In these works, the materials and designs of the original clothing are replaced with batik, a colourful and ornately patterned fabric.
The major installation on view, Scramble for Africa, 2003, features fourteen headless, mixed-race mannequins seated at a sixteen-foot-long table. They symbolise the European figureheads who came together at the Berlin Conference, 1884–1885, to annex territories of trade in Africa for each of their countries. With regard to colonialism, the absence of heads implies loss of identity and moreover, loss of humanity. Of this work, Shonibare explains, “I wanted to represent these European leaders as mindless in their hunger for what the Belgian King Leopold II called ‘a slice of this magnificent African cake.’”