Sue Hubbard

Citibank Photography Prize 1999
Yinka Shonibare

ls cultural identity a
construct? lf the trappings
of privilege and power are
removed, are we 'all the same
under the skin'? Are we simply
what we own and if stripped
of the artefacts of class
and wealth do we lose that
identity? Yinka Shonibare's
witty and iconoclastic
installations and photographs
play games in the spaces
where the post-colonial and
the post-modern meet.

Shot on location over a
period of three days in an
opulent stately home in
Hertfordshire, Shonibare
appropriated its country
house interiors and took
on the central role of Dandy
to explore notions of
dominance, subservience
and artifice, of Victorian
Britain and British Heritage
against the backdrop of
our colonial legacy.

Shonibare's staged
photographs mimic the style
of Victorian theatre at the
height of colonialism. Within
this scenario Shonibare
takes on the character of the
English fop - familiar from -
Beau Brummel to Wilde -
playing on the double
bluff that such dandyism
is itself the construct of a
fictitious identity.

Shonibare plunders pell-mell
fashion, craft, ethnography
and painting, blurring the
differences between fine art and craft, 'primitive'
and 'first' world art, to force
questions about 'authenticity'.
In the creation of his opulent
Victorian Philanthropist's
Parlour of 1996/97, he used
newly created African batiks
decorated with motifs of
black footballers playing for
European clubs. With Diary
of a Victorian Dandy, the
fawning sycophancy and
hypocrisy of the white
protagonists surrounding
the Dandy highlights the
complexities of social
integration and the apparent
acceptance of those seen as
'other' by the ruling classes.
Shonibare colludes with the
viewer to make us painfully
aware that without the
trappings of wealth or class
the black Dandy is displaying
he would never have gained
access to this social milieu.
Despite the playful scenario,
Shonibare illustrates that,
while for the moment the
ruling classes may enjoy him
as an 'exotic' curiosity, much
in the same way as 18th
century wealthy families kept
small blackamoor houseboys
dressed appealingly in the
family livery, should he
cease to entertain them they
are quite likely to close ranks
placing him once again
on the outside.

Confusions of social identity
are further compounded
when he appears to take
on the privileged position of
the man ofthe house despite
its playful humour; the work
uncovers, with biting satire.
continuing hypocrisies
associated with attitudes
towards race and class.