Yinka Shonibare Builds a Sanctuary of Safety at Serpentine

Staged across Serpentine Galleries’ south location, Yinka Shonibare‘s solo exhibition, Suspended States (12 April–1 September 2024), lands in London.

Featuring two never-before-seen installations, fibreglass sculptures, textile works, and woodcut prints, the exhibition is held inside the former tea pavilion, now transformed into a space filled with theatre, insight, and political concern.

Suspended States marks the British Nigerian artist’s first solo institutional exhibition in London in over two decades. It’s about colonial legacies, structural racism, migration, and the growing need for sites of refuge and shelter.

Works on view stress the impact of inherited influences, teaching us to probe and prod how colonialism has shaped our present. Decolonised Structures (2022–2023) comprise a series of sculptures that reimagine public statues of British imperialists, stripped of bronze and marble and cloaked with vibrant Dutch wax patterns, a reference to colonial trading.

Another highlight from the exhibition is Sanctuary City (2024), a new installation featuring miniature models of buildings painted black with illuminated interiors adorned with colourful Dutch wax prints. Each model represents a sanctuary for persecuted and vulnerable groups throughout history. The work sets a solemn tone to reflect on the shelter crisis around the world and underscores the urgent need for refuge or safety architecture.

Discussing the exhibition, Shonibare said, ‘My work has always been about the crossing of boundaries; geographically, visually, historically, and conceptually. This is an exhibition in which Western iconography is reimagined and interrogated, at a moment in history when nationalism, protectionism, and hostility towards foreigners is on the rise.’

The show feels like a full circle moment for Shonibare, who first exhibited at Serpentine South in 1992 as a finalist in the Barclays Young Artist Award.

The exhibition coincides with the artist’s presentation at the 60th Venice Biennale, where he will exhibit work in the Nigerian Pavilion alongside artists Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi Dike, Onyeka Igwe, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Abraham Oghobase, Precious Okoyomon, and Fatimah Tuggar.