Our recent trip to the Auckland art gallery came as an unusual surprise. A mixture of colourful patterns and traditional European clothing design typical to the renaissance period were present in the works. The capital artist on display by the name of Yinka Shinabore, played on an idea of African fabrics, as we would first interpret them to be, not necessarily as they are. In relation to the fashions of the time period, and the country in which the artist has portrayed in his works through traditional European garments, the fabric is not what they would want in their own fashions. It is African, and too loud for their reserved style. The chunky, bright patterns are somewhat distracting. This is what is ironic about the pieces. Even though they assumed the fabrics to be ethnically African, underneath it was actually made locally in Holland, fabrics which would have usually been made to their liking.
I felt that the sculptural aspect helped to push out the idea of semiotics, as the dummy's weren't the people themselves, they merely stood in for the people who would have worn the clothes, Well dressed Middle and upper class Europeans. Their heads missing, it made us focus purely on the clothing that they were wearing. The fabric was the main signifier to his work. It represented the fabrics used and made in Africa, although these fabrics were not at all made or designed there, they were Dutch.
This was used to symbolise racial harmony between the two groups. White and black together as one. The whole concept of fusion between European make, and African flavour and style was the signified as the fabrics were thought to be what they weren't. The woven garments were only made from something replicated to look authentic, standing for the "Nigerian design", made either locally or in Singapore. After the European colonisation of some countries in Africa in the 18th to 19th century period, the Dutch settlers came and started to sell imported fabrics that were (most importantly) cheap, bright and colourful. This became so common to a point that we made the assumption of the fabrics origin as African.
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Hi Julieanne
ReplyDeletea good response touching on key ideas in the work and using the language of semiotics. Just a note to make sure of your facts. the time period that Shonibare references is not the Renaissance but the 18th and 19th centuries, the period of greatest European colonial expansion. This makes a big difference to any reading of the work. I am not sure that I agree that Shonibare's work points to the 'racial harmony' between colonised and coloniser. Certainly the confusion of fabric with style and the colonial history surrounding the fabrics points to the interdependence of the two groups but not sure that harmony is the best description of the relationship between the two.
cheers grant