M WOODS Museum, Beijing, China
25 August – 11 October 2020
M WOODS presents two film works by Yinka Shonibare CBE at their Temple Galleries.
Yinka Shonibare CBE has spent three decades exploring the European colonial impact on African identities and their diasporas. Rather than taking a fixed position on visual identity and cultural representation, Shonibare opens up a space of cultural hybridity and duality in his practice.
The films are shown within the museum’s specially reconstructed Ming dynasty temples that were originally built on the museum’s current site in 1452 by the Jingtai Emperor of the Ming dynasty. These temples were the only ones in the city to accommodate both lamas and monks.
Visitors are invited to view Shonibare’s films Odile and Odette (2005) and Addio del Passato (2011) within this unique setting and context of the rebuilt temples, thus combining tradition, Chinese history and contemporary art. The period during which the temples were built was also itself a significant one in terms of cultural migration and cross-pollination in a Chinese context.
The presentation of the films also marks the first project in a new series of programming and initiatives at M WOODS that will reconsider aspects of post-colonial theory, diasporic knowledge and Black intellectual thought in the context of China and East Asia.
Addio del Passato, 2011, High Definition Digital Video, 16:52 min, edition of 5 plus 2 APs. © Yinka Shonibare CBE. All Rights Reserved, DACS / Artimage.