October 31, 2008 – January 18, 2009
New Work Gallery

Yinka Shonibare, MBE, British-born of Nigerian parents, is best known for installations and photographs reflecting the legacy of 19th century colonialism.  He creates mise-en-scénes of headless mannequins in Victorian attire of wax-printed African fabrics, produced in Britain and the Netherlands.  The missing identities play into his fashion/fabric/production correlations.

Shonibare creates a mélange of African and European cultures reflecting a legacy of the colonizer and the colonized.  The installation Shonibare will create for MAM, A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child, features an idealized family clothed in his wax-printed, 19th century attire astride human powered 19th century flying machines. The symbolic aspirations of flying, expressive of emancipatory freedom, allude to the monumental efforts by thousands of refugees to reach a city of promise as millions of tourists arrive seeking fun-and-sun.

Photo credit:  Yinka Shonibare, MBE, detail from A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child. Courtesy of the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York, and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.  Realized with assistance from Miami Art Museum.
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Yinka Shonibare, MBE:  A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child is organized by Miami Art Museum and curated by Assistant Director for Programs/Senior Curator Peter Boswell as part of New Work, a series of projects by leading contemporary artists.  It is supported by the Funding Arts Network, Marilyn Holifield and Marvin Holloway, Akerman Senterfitt, and MAM’s Annual Exhibition Fund.