Cristea Roberts Gallery is pleased to present Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern by Yinka Shonibare CBE. New woodblock prints and hand-painted sculptures of African ritual artefacts will be unveiled alongside earlier works featuring the motif of the all-American cowboy and symbols of the British empire, showcasing Shonibare’s evolving printmaking practice over the past seven years.
The new works represent the tangled relationships between Africa and Europe, illustrating the radical influence of African artefacts on the work of western modernists, from Picasso, Derain, Modigliani, Matisse to Man Ray to the Dada and Surrealist movements.
“We are going through a kind of African renaissance moment now, too, so I wanted to understand the origins of how Black culture became fashionable in Western modernism. I am kind of revisiting how the power of African aesthetics managed to inspire a whole movement in the west.” – Yinka Shonibare
The Private View will be held on Thursday, 21 September from 6 – 7.30pm