YINKA SHONIBARE MBE AND THE ART OF RESISTANCE Art Experience NYC

When the great lord passes the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts’. Few weeks ago, while working in this review, I read this Ethiopian proverb, quoted by James Scott in his book Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990). Since then I have wondered how Yinka Shonibare MBE’s work could be related to this saying. In what follows I will try to answer this question.
In Domination and the Art of Resistance, scholar James Scott distinguishes between what he calls ‘public’ and ‘hidden’ transcripts. Imposed by the powerful, these public transcripts aim toward a self-celebration of the dominants, as well as the moral values and relations of production that allow the perpetuation of the status quo. They also have a theatrical character. Neither the ruling classes not their subjugated groups believe in them. Actually they both, in their respective ‘hidden transcripts’, usually see the other group with distrust and hostility. Nevertheless, the rituals of reverence and the adulation play a productive role in the relations of power. They allow the powerful to enact a sense of unity, presenting the oppressive regime as a timeless social order and rendering idealized images of the rulers. The oppressed, on the other hand, can take advantage of the public transcripts in order to introduce some subtle forms of opposition, like the wise peasant in the Ethiopian proverb does with his public reverence that contrasts with the silent act of disrespect.

YINKA SHONIBARE, MBE
Fake Death Picture (The Suicide – Manet), 2011
Digital chromogenic print
Framed: 58 1⁄2 x 71 1⁄4 in (148.59 x 180.98 cm)
©The Artist
Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

In his work, British artist Yinka Shonibare seems to play the role of the subaltern. His acceptance of the public transcripts starts with the inclusion of MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) as part of his artistic name. He received this honorific distinction in 2005. It is hard to tell whether he proudly added these abbreviations to his name or if he did it as a mockery. This ambivalence prevails in his work, in which he seems to embrace the aesthetic tradition of 18th and 19th century European painting, while assuming a supposed “Africanness” as an allegory of identity, or a personal signature.
Shonibare’s images could be seen as attempts to rewrite Eurocentric historical narratives by including black and mestizo characters attending to tragic scenes taken from Western painting—such as the death of Saint-Francis or Leonardo da Vinci—or playing a main role in a well-known Italian opera. In the series of pictures shown in his recent show at James Cohan Gallery, Addio del Passato (So Close My Sad Story) the main character—a dying white man—wears 18th century costumes made from fabrics that suggest a sense of “Africannness.” At first glance, these are vindications of the traditionally oppressed, post-colonized world, in its undermined place in global culture, history, politics and economics. However, Shonibare seems to go beyond these types of postcolonial parodies. He also points to identity issues in themselves. I would claim that in Shonibare’s work these issues related to national identities function as parodies of public transcripts that are reminiscent of a colonized past.

https://www.artexperiencenyc.com/yinka-shonibare-mbe-and-the-art-of-resistance/