Yinka Shonibare CBE RA and India Mahdavi reimagine sketch’s Gallery restaurant

Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to announce that artist Yinka Shonibare CBE RA has transformed the iconic London venue sketch with an installation of new artworks.

Shonibare has created 13 new site-specific works featuring nine framed quilts and four hand-painted masks carved from wood that replicate African masks found in Pablo Picasso’s collection. Titled ‘Modern Magic’ these works are a continuation of ‘African Spirits of Modernism’, a solo exhibition presented at Stephen Friedman Gallery in 2021.

Shonibare’s vibrant quilts employ embroidery and appliqué techniques and feature the artist’s signature batik fabrics, representing flexibility of identity as much as the implications of trade and colonialism. Backgrounds of diamond-shaped patterns are a nod to the recurring Harlequin motif in Picasso’s work and reflect both artists’ interest in the acrobatic ‘trickster’. Shonibare’s use of richly dyed fabrics illuminates the influence of African traditions on European conceptions of our modern-day world.

The artist’s series of wooden masks are replicas of those originally used by African peoples to conjure up new powers and realms. Western modernist artists were inspired by these power objects of transformation. The African spirit reimagines classical ideals, like the centaur, as humans and animal forms collide to disrupt order and hierarchy.

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA commented: “After Matisse showed Picasso African art for the first time, it changed the history of modern art. Picasso was interested in appropriating from another culture, and I also appropriate from European ethnic art. Cultural appropriation can be a two-way street. This collaboration with sketch has given me an opportunity to expand my creative process - creating a different environment to encounter and experience my art in a fun and relaxing setting.”