YINKA SHONIBARE CBE RA

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA was born in 1962 in London and then moved to Nigeria at the age of three. He returned to the UK to live while studying Fine Art at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London in 1989 and received his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London, a few years later.

In 2004, he was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 2008, his mid-career survey began at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, travelling in 2009 to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. In 2010, his first public art commission ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London and is in the permanent collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

In 2013, he was elected a Royal Academician and was awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’ in 2019. His installation ‘The British Library’ was acquired by Tate in 2019 and is currently on display at Tate Modern, London.

In 2021, Shonibare was awarded the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award. A major retrospective of his work, Yinka Shonibare CBE: End of Empire, opened at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg in May 2021 followed by his co-ordination of The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London which opened in September 2021. The survey solo exhibition, Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head, opened in April 2022 at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan followed by the unveiling in June of a major new sculptural work, Wind Sculpture in Bronze I at Royal Djurgården, Stockholm.

Yinka Shonibare has exhibited globally; with Stephen Friedman in London and recently showing works with James Cohan in New York and Goodman Gallery in Cape Town. His works are in numerous notable museum collections internationally such as the Tate Collection, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town; Norval Foundation, Cape Town; National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the Van den Broek Foundation, The Netherlands.