Yinka Shonibare Opens at The Brooklyn Museum Today

As I start thinking about themes and inspiration for my upcoming trip to London to study fabric print design at Central St. Martin's, I cannot help but think about the nebulous relationship between Europe and Africa. Fortuitously, today marks the beginning of the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition of the work of Nigerian-born British artist Yinka Shonibare MBE. Shonibare’s artwork explores contemporary African identity and its relationship to European colonialism through painting, sculpture, installation, and moving image. Often working with visual symbols such as Dutch wax fabric (produced in Europe for a West African market), Shonibare evokes the complex web of interactions, economic and racial, that reveal inequalities between the dominant and colonized cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Here are some samples of his work: