Goodman Gallery presents Restitution of the Mind and Soul, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in Cape Town; his second exhibition with the gallery since presenting the iconic African Library to South Africa in 2018, which then marked the artist’s first show on the Continent for fifteen years.
The premise for Shonibare’s exhibition four years ago, titled Ruins Decorated, rested on his belief that culture has evolved out of a process described by the artist as a “mongrelisation”.
Restitution of the Mind and Soul takes Shonibare’s enduring interest in the legacy of African aesthetics to the next level, responding to the fact that “the African contribution to modernism has never really been celebrated in the way it ought to be” (Shonibare). For this latest body of work - spanning quilts, masks and sculpture - Shonibare considers how African aesthetics have shaped western modernist expression.