Yinka Shonibare CBE RA

Sitter in 3 portraits
Yinka Shonibare is a British-Nigerian artist based in the UK. He studied Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art (now Central Saint Martin's College) and at Goldsmiths College. Shonibare's work explores issues of race, colonialism and present-day globalisation through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and film. His trademark material is brightly coloured Dutch 'African' batik fabric. In 2004, Shonibare was a Turner prize nominee and awarded an MBE. He has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and internationally at leading museums. He was elected a Royal Academician in 2013. In 2010, he was selected to create a public sculpture for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, a scaled-down replica of the HMS Victory with Shonibare’s trademark fabric for sails, which is now permanently displayed at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. His Wind Sculptures have been installed outside Washington’s Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, London’s Royal Academy of Arts, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and New York’s Central Park. Shonibare initiated Guest Projects in 2008, a residency for artistic practitioners to use his London studio for one month.