Yinka Shonibare, It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To, 2013

Yinka Shonibare

It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To, 2013

24ct gold leaf embellishment, hand applied dutch wax batik fabrics on 225gsm Somerset Enhanced Paper

Boldly signed and numbered 11/35 (unique variant) by Yinka Shonibare on the front

Frame included

Boldly signed and numbered 11/35 (unique variant) by Yinka Shonibare on the front

Beautifully detailed with 24ct gold gilding, the edition was finished with different hand applied fabrics, making each one totally unique. The work relates to the culture of excess that has contributed to the current financial crisis. Shonibare has written on the relationship between money and art: 'I think that artists shouldn't follow capital - I think capital should follow art. I am not being moralistic about the relationship of money to art. I just find it difficult to make work without thinking about the impact or the potential impact of global trauma on me and my ability to continue to produce as an artist'. The title - "It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want to" refers to the famous 1963 hit song about teenage misery written by Lesley Gore, who became a teenage star.

Published by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Frame included: floated and framed under plexiglass
Measurements:
Frame:
33 x 26 x 1.5 inches
Print:
25.5 x 19 inches

About Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA was born in London in 1962 and moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three. He returned to the UK to study Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London and Goldsmiths College, London, where he received his Master’s in Fine Art.
Over the past decades, Shonibare has become well known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalization. Working in painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation, Shonibare’s work examines race, class and the construction of cultural identity through a sharp political commentary of the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe and their respective economic and political histories. Shonibare uses wry citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities.
In 2002, Shonibare was commissioned by Okwui Enwezor to create one of his most recognised installations, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation for Documenta XI. In 2004, he was nominated for the Turner Prize and was awarded the decoration of Member of the ‘Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’, or MBE. In 2019 Shonibare was made Commander of the same order, amending his professional name to include CBE. In 2008, his mid-career survey commenced at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and toured to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. In 2010, his first public art commission Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London.
In 2013, Shonibare was elected as a Royal Academician and his most recent contributions have included: the RA Family Album, which was used to wrap Burlington Gardens building during construction and his two curated rooms which were part of the 2017 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, during which Wind Sculpture VI was also displayed in the RA courtyard.
His recent major commission with the Public Art Fund, Wind Sculpture (SG) I, was installed at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park from March 7 through October 14, 2018. FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art presented The American Library at the Cleveland Public Library from July 14 until September 30, 2018. The British Library was recently acquired by the Tate London. In March 2021, Shonibare received Whitechapel Gallery’s prestigious Art Icon award, becoming the eighth artist to receive the honor. He was also selected to coordinate the Royal Academy of Arts 253rd Summer Exhibition in September 2021.
Shonibare’s works are included in notable collections internationally, including the Tate Collection, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome; Pérez Art Museum Miami in Florida and VandenBroek Foundation, The Netherlands.
-Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery

Additional Yinka Shonibare biography:
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA was born in 1962 in London, England and moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three. He lives and works in London. Shonibare was a Turner Prize nominee in 2004 and was elected as a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy, London in 2013. He was awarded the decoration of Most Excellent Order of the British Empire or MBE in 2004 and Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire or CBE in 2019. Shonibare received the prestigious Art Icon Award from Whitechapel Gallery, London and an honorary degree from The Courtauld Institute, London in 2021.

Shonibare’s practice questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions. His signature material is the brightly coloured ‘African’ batik fabric he buys at Brixton market in London. Batik was originally inspired by Indonesian design, mass-produced by the Dutch and eventually sold to the colonies in West Africa. In the 1960s the material became a signifier of African identity and independence.

In Spring 2024, Shonibare will have a solo exhibition at Serpentine, London, UK. He will also participate in Nigeria's Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy. The artist’s new public work includes two outdoor sculptures; ‘Material (SG) IV’ is a striking four metre work for Frieze Sculpture unveiled in September 2023, and a work commissioned by the David Oluwale Memorial Association will be unveiled in Aire Park as part of Leeds 2023. To mark Sharjah Biennial's 30th anniversary in February 2023, Shonibare was commissioned to create a series of new works for the exhibition. He was commissioned to transform the Gallery at sketch, London as part of a long-term programme of artist-conceived restaurants, which opened to the public in March 2022.

Shonibare was commissioned by Okwui Enwezor in 2002 to create one of his most recognised works ‘Gallantry and Criminal Conversation’ at Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, which launched him onto an international stage. In September 2008 his major mid-career survey commenced at the MCA Sydney, before travelling to Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. In March 2016 as part of the 14-18 NOW programme of World War 1 Centenary Art commissions, Turner Contemporary’s Sunley Gallery, Margate, UK was transformed by two major works by Shonibare, ‘The British Library’ and ‘End of Empire’. ‘The British Library’, an installation of over 6,000 books bound in Dutch wax batik fabric, was acquired by Tate Galleries in 2019 and exhibited at Tate Modern, London.

At the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 in a pavilion dedicated to artists from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds based in the UK, Shonibare exhibited and also took the role of mentor to a young artist. In 2018 Shonibare curated the Arts Council Collection in a touring exhibition ‘Criminal Ornamentation’ that toured regional museums the UK. Also in 2018, Shonibare curated ‘Talisman in the Age of Difference’ at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London which brought together the of work of forty-six artists from across Africa and the Diaspora. He was selected as coordinator for the 2021 ‘Summer Exhibition’ at Royal Academy of Arts, London, England.

For the last ten years Shonibare has run ‘Guest Projects’ in the ground floor of his London studio, an initiative that gives access to free project space for one month to artistic practitioners of any discipline. He recently launched an ambitious new Artist Residency project, Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, in Lagos, Nigeria. The Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to facilitating international artistic and cultural exchange and developing creative practices through artist residencies and international collaborations.

Shonibare has developed an extensive portfolio of public works. In 2023, a new outdoor sculpture commissioned by the David Oluwale Memorial Association will be unveiled in Aire Park as part of Leeds 2023, the city’s landmark year of culture. In July 2020, the sculptural commission ‘Bird Catcher’s Dilemma’ was unveiled at Salzburg Museum, Austria, celebrating 100 years of the Salzburg Festival. Shonibare’s ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ was the 2010 Fourth Plinth Commission and was displayed in Trafalgar Square, London until January 2012. This work was later acquired by National Maritime Museum and is now permanently installed outside the museum's new entrance in Greenwich Park, London. In 2012 the Royal Opera House commissioned ‘Globe Head Ballerina’, which was on display on the building’s exterior in Covent Garden, London until 2017.

Examples of Shonibare’s monumental ‘Wind Sculpture’ series have been exhibited in locations across the world. Iterations of this body of work have been displayed at Ndubuisi Kanu Park, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria (2015–2016); Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC (2016); Central Park, New York (2018); Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (2019); Greenway Public Park, Boston, Massachusetts (2020); Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts (2021–2022) and at Expo 2020 Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2022). Sculptures from the series are permanently installed Royal Djurgården Sculpture Park in in Stockholm, Sweden (2022); Howick Place, London (2014) and Davidson College, North Carolina (2018). A new iteration, ‘Material (SG) I’, was unveiled at Whitman Walker Health Centre Commission, Washington DC in 2019 and the second edition was installed at 360 Rosemary, West Palm Beach, Florida in 2021.

Notable public solo exhibitions include those at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Michigan, USA (2022); Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria (2021); M WOODS Art Community, Beijing, China (2020); The Arts House, Singapore (2020); British Museum, London, England (2019); Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, USA; Hereford Cathedral, Hereford, England (2019); Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago, Illinois (2019); Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (2019); Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College, North Carolina, USA (2018); Fitzrovia Chapel, London, England (2018); Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, England (2018); Busan Museum of Art, South Korea (2018); Howick Place, London, England (2018); Gemeentemuseum Helmond, Netherlands (2016); VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Ireland (2016); Turner Contemporary, Margate, England (2016); British Council UK/Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria (2015-2016); Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Korea (2015DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montréal, Québec (2015); Gerisch Stiftung, Neumünster, Germany (2014); Fondation Blachère, Apt, France (2014); Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (2014); Gdansk City Art Gallery, Gdansk, Poland (2014); Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wroclaw, Poland (2014); GL Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark (2014); Royal Museums Greenwich, London, England (2013); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, England (2013) (2014); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, USA (2013); San Diego Art Museum, San Diego, USA (2012); Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2010); Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco (2010); Alcalá 31 Centros de Arte, Madrid, Spain (2011) and Centro de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (2011).

Shonibare’s works are included in prominent collections internationally, including Tate, London, England; Arts Council Collection, London, England; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; The British Museum, London, England; The Wellcome Collection, London, England; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, Italy; VandenBroek Foundation, The Netherlands and Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.

Courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery