A renowned Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has created fascinating works of art through life size mannequin's wearing traditional Nigerian fabrics, as well as photography and film reenactments of historical images and classic literary works. He has uniquely explored Dandism's and the artistry of gentlemanly behavior, and is infusing it in a way that is satirical of the complexities of colonization and post colonization, while still paying tribute to his Nigerian Heritage.
Yinka Shonibare MBE (b. United Kingdom, 1962). Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 03.00 hours, 1998. Chromogenic photograph, 72 x 90 in. Collections of Peter Norton and Eileen Harris Norton, Santa
Monica. Image courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and James Cohan Gallery, New York. © the artist
Monica. Image courtesy of the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and James Cohan Gallery, New York. © the artist
Yinka Shonibare, MBE was born in London and moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three. He returned to London to study Fine Art first at Byam Shaw College of Art (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) and then at Goldsmiths College, where he received his MFA, graduating as part of the ‘Young British Artists’ generation. He currently lives and works in the East End of London.
Over the past decade, Shonibare has become well known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. Shonibare’s work explores these issues, alongside those of race and class, through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and, more recently, film and performance. Using this wide range of media, Shonibare examines in particular the construction of identity and tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe and their respective economic and political histories. Mixing Western art history and literature, he asks what constitutes our collective contemporary identity today. Having described himself as a ‘post-colonial’ hybrid, Shonibare questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions. 
For more of Yinka Shonibare work check out:http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/
Official biography courtesy of Yinka Shonibare MBE
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