Audio Transcript: Yinka Shonibare

This is Yinka Shonibare’s room. He’s been shortlisted for the his sculptural installations, as seen at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, in London.

Here he is talking about his work, The Swing (after Fragonard):

“What you see in front of you is a work that has actually been inspired by Fragonard’s painting, The Swing, and it’s a re-make in three-dimensions. The painting is rococo, and it’s a style in which the French depicted their extravagant lifestyles.

And the fabric used for this sculpture is fabric bought at Brixton market. And the fabrics are not authentically African – they were produced by the Dutch in the 19th century and then subsequently by the English for sales to the African market. And I found a lovely fabric with Chanel logo prints on it. So, the piece is both historical and contemporary. And really the idea behind it is to draw a parallel with the relationship between the contemporary first world and third-world countries. I want to show that behind excessive lifestyles there are people who have to provide the labour to make this kind of lifestyle happen.

But generally I think I made a piece of work about this painting because I actually admire the work very much. And I like the contradiction of taking something that’s supposedly ‘ethnic’ and putting that onto classical European painting.”