Yinka Shonibare CBE RA features in 'The Invention of the Stranger in Art'
With over eighty works, the group exhibition The Invention of the Stranger in Art sheds light on the construction and representation of 'foreignness' in European art.
Contemporary artists such as Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, Gülsün Karamustafa and Lisl Ponger share their view on the topic with video art, painting and photography. Using pictures by important artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jean-Étienne Liotard, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, familiar pictorial traditions and perspectives are questioned.
Shonibare’s exhibiting work Odile and Odette (2005) is a film made in collaboration with the Royal Opera House. Here, the artist re-imagines a classical episode from Tchaikovsky’s Ballet Swan Lake, where the lead roles 'Odile' and 'Odette' engage in a close dialogue of gestures and movement. Odile and Odette are characters which embody ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and are traditionally danced by a sole prima ballerina. The artist transforms this classical part into a complex and subtle interplay between two dancers in which the duality of the characters is played out in racial difference. Mirroring each other’s expression on either side of an ornate Baroque frame, Shonibare suggests that their movement is both estranged and united. The film's narrative and construction suggests that both characters are one and that their complex relationship is both co-dependent and formed by each other.
Shonibare explained in an interview: "What I find interesting is the idea that you cannot define Africa without Europe. The idea that there is some kind of dichotomy between Africa and Europe - between the "exotic other" and the "civilised European", if you like - I think is completely simplistic. So I am interested in exploring the mythology of these two so-called separate spheres, and in creating an overlap of identities."
Exhibition opening on Friday, 18 October, 7pm, with Mayor Martina Pfister and exhibition curator Julia Carrasco. Music by Barbara Rosnitschek and Barbara Mauch-Heinke. Doors open: 6.30pm.
