Yinka Shonibare @ Stephen Friedman Gallery

The exhibition, African Spirits of Modernism, comprises quilts, sculptures and a series of African masks that engage with Yinka Shonibare’s own identity as a ‘post-colonial hybrid’. The works are accompanied by archival material that captures the burgeoning interest in African art in Paris in the 1920s.

Playfully described by the artist as “Picasso in reverse”, this body of new work explores the relationship between African aesthetics and western modernist expression by juxtaposing icons of classical European antiquity with African artefacts from Picasso’s collection.