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For much of his career, British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has been so obsessed with work, his private life has suffered. Now he claims that has changed. "I guess I'm at that place where I feel I can relax a little bit more," he emails from London. "I don't have to be so work-obsessed, so now I guess I have a little more time for the ladies." This seems to be a current theme. Last month Shonibare told the Guardian he had sacrificed a number of relationships for his art, adding, "but to all the ladies out there - I'm different now".
Rachel Kent, who curated the Shonibare retrospective coming here from Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, thinks that is hilarious. "He loves female company," she laughs. "He is very sociable, engaging company. He is an absolute darling to work with."
But ladies, Shonibare, 46, is not coming to Auckland for the opening of his show at the New Gallery next Friday evening. He's working on his next exhibition - about fairies who distribute food to the starving - and long flights are prohibitive because of his health. Paralysed for three years from the age of 19 by a viral infection, his spine is permanently damaged and the left side of his body remains seriously affected. Kent says that in the three years she has known him, she has never heard him complain.
"We all have limits," he says (via email because he has been ill). "Mine happen to be physical. We are all inclined to find a solution to a problem and I have simply found ways of getting around my physical limitations. I've devised alternative ways of working."
The title of the show, Yinka Shonibare MBE, is ironic rather than boastful. Shonibare was given the MBE in 2005 for services to art and culture. "That struck him and many others as immensely ironic because his whole practice has been about critiquing the very culture that has now awarded him with this honour," explains Kent. "His work is all about the relationship between Europe and Africa, colonialism and its legacy. The Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah refused the OBE but Yinka decided to accept it. He prefers to subvert from within. He has talked about the Trojan Horse relationship to the aristocracy.
"I guess one of the things Yinka excels at is working in a way that appears to be quite benign and often quite alluring and beautiful but once he draws you in, you get hit with the message and the politics behind it.
"People often make the assumption that as a black British artist, he should be working in a more confrontational mode of address. But because he is all about subverting the obvious, he works in a much more gentle, subtle way."
Shonibare's work is multi-media but perhaps his most recognisable objects are his headless mannequins dressed in exquisite aristocratic clothing based on costumes from the 18th and 19th centuries. The fabric, brightly coloured "African" batik he buys from the Brixton markets, is a device used in his analysis of the process of colonialism. Batik was never part of the culture of those west African countries which later embraced it - like Nigeria. Instead, batik cloth was made by 19th century manufacturers in the Netherlands and Manchester, inspired by Indonesian patterns. "From the 1960s on, batik was embraced quite actively within the west African community during the times of the independence movements," says Kent. "They were a way of expressing an African identity. They were colonial byproducts transformed through the mill of history to become statements of authenticity."
In the Sydney show, the figures were arranged in tableaux sitting around a huge table, carving up a map of Africa, or engaged in a series of deviant sexual acts - a room which attracted a steady stream of giggling teenagers. The collection coming to Auckland - as the show travels from Sydney to New York and Washington - is "edited", much smaller. A few mannequins will be on show, including The Age of Enlightenment: Adam Smith, depicting the Scottish economist who opposed colonialism and slavery and Leisure Lady, an aristocratic woman walking three ocelots on leads.
Two of Shonibare's photographic series starring himself will be on display: Diary of a Victorian Dandy, depicting one day in the life of a debauched black dandy and the 12-part Dorian Gray, in which he plays the dandy whose portrait in the attic absorbs his depravity. The series - all black and white except for one image - is carefully based on the 1945 film directed by Albert Lewin.
"There is one moment in the film when it bursts into technicolour and there is one photo in Yinka's series in bright colour, when Dorian confronts his painting and realises what has happened - all the depravity and guilt has transferred on to the painting and Dorian has these red, bloodied hands, bulging eyes and staring hair," says Kent.
"The black and white also refers to race and stereotyping, reversing expectations with a black dandy. Yinka is interested in inverting the norm, often in a quite subtle way."
Shonibare emails: "Historically, the dandy is an outside figure. The dandy is a trickster who parodies the establishment. I identify with knowing the outside status of the dandy. Famous dandies like Beau Brummel and Oscar Wilde were not quite members of the aristocracy but managed to enter society through their wit and style - a stance which I consider political."
Along with another photo series called The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, two films will complete the exhibition: Odile and Odette, a ballet based on Swan Lake developed by Shonibare with the Royal Opera House and the Africa Centre in Covent Garden, and A Masked Ball, which was commissioned by Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Swedish public television. Based on the assassination of Swedish King Gustav III in 1792, A Masked Ball is an
eerie sequence staged in a grand old house in which masked aristocrats weave a dance of death, culminating in the shooting of the king, played by a woman.
"The king was considered quite loose with the public purse," explains Kent. "He was a dandy and a fop. He is played by a female performer in the film as he was an ambivalent, fey character. It screened in primetime on Swedish public TV. As with a lot of Yinka's works, it draws on historical references but it's very much about current issues and contemporary politics."
The circular-narrative film is hypnotic and unsettling, with no sound except the magnified swishing of the skirts and a loudly beating heart. Says Kent, "Jane Campion came in to see it the other day and she spent a lot of time watching that work, commenting on the way it was filmed."
Shonibare, who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2004, has won the commission for next year's Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square where he is going to install a scale model of Nelson's ship HMS Victory, inside a giant glass bottle. The sails will be made of batik material. "That is so pointed," says Kent. "His work is so playful and witty. Yinka is so cheeky."
Exhibition
Who: Yinka Shonibare MBE
Where and when: New Gallery, Feb 28 to June 1
Born: London 1962; moved to Lagos with family three years later; returned to London when he was 16.
Career: Studied art at Goldsmiths; nominated for the Turner prize 2004; joint winner of the Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square next year.
