13 October 2022 - February 2023

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Unstructured Icons

By Yinka Shonibare CBE RA

Unstructured Icons is a set of woodblock prints with a decorated portfolio box by Yinka Shonibare CBE. The artist expresses his British-Nigerian heritage through themes of race, class and cultural identity and here responds to historical portraits of elite figures.  He covers their faces with stylized African ritual masks and inserts Ankara fabric, traditionally worn in West and Central Africa, into their opulent Western dress.

This is a new acquisition supported by the Contemporary Art Society.

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Unstructured Icons – Aristocrat I, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London.

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