In his new exhibition Suspended States at London’s Serpentine Gallery, artist Yinka Shonibare looks at the impact of imperial ambition.
Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill and Sir Charles Napier statues are dressed to impress in Dutch wax fabrics but stripped of their bronze, marble and their power.
An intention of Turner Prize-nominated artist Yinka Shonibare, who says we should question colonial history – not topple it.
He told Sky News: “I personally don’t think that, you know, you should be pulling statues down. I think that, in the same way that you wouldn’t go into a library and start burning all the books you didn’t like.
“I don’t think you can erase history.”
Shonibare’s nuanced view comes at a time when there is vociferous debate on the role statues play, from colonialist Cecil Rhodes at an Oxford college to 17th-century slave merchant Edward Colston – whose statue was pulled down in 2020 and rolled into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest.
