Announcement relating to an exhibition, 2008
Published by: Artforum magazine/ACA Gallery of SCAD
Year published: 2008
Unpaginated.

Artforum advert for Odile and Odette, solo show by Yinka Shonibare MBE, at ACA Gallery of SCAD, January 10 - March 2 2008. 

Within the accompanying catalogue, the exhibition was described as bringing together “ a new film (made in collaboration with London’s Royal Opera House), related photographic stills, a large painting installation and a sculptural work.

Shonibare stages elaborately realized tableaux that reinterpret 18th- and 19th-century art and history. Although his work is diverse, employing photography, painting and film, it is his grand sculptural installations - populated by costumed figures - that have garnered the most acclaim for their deft blending of stagecraft, costume and gesture. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach to art making which includes theatre and design, Shonibare functions as something of a writer, director and choreographer of his productions. He is as attentive to the craft and style of these pieces as a traditional couturier… As his artistic practice evolves into new media (Odile and Odette (2005) is his second film), Shonibare continues to find new and provocative ways of redressing power. His work abstracts current issues as source material. Shonibare’s painting installation Black Gold I references the explosive role of oil in the current war and political crises in the Middle East. The similarly inspired Flower Cloud II (2006) sculpture illustrates a graceful ballerina’s dance upon a blossoming nuclear mushroom cloud. His Odile and Odette addresses the current state of sociopolitical health of contemporary society via the 19th-century ballet Swan Lake. In Shonibare’s version, notions of good and bad are set against two dancers’ reflections in a Baroque mirror. Portraying the characters Odile and Odette, the dancers’ duality (which is read visually in Shonibare’s film as one dancer) is delicately played out in racial difference.”

From the introduction to the exhibition’s catalogue, by Laurie Ann Farrell, Executive Director of Exhibitions, ACA Gallery of the Savannah College of Art and Design.