Yinka Shonibare
Cowboy Angels
Past exhibition
19 July – 1 September 2019
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Cowboy Angels comprises a set of five woodcuts with a collage of Dutch wax batik fabric by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE.
Purchased by the British Museum with the help of the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation, they're the first work by the artist to enter the Museum's collection.
Shonibare was born in Britain in 1962 and grew up in Nigeria before returning to London to study art. His work is concerned with cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism in a globalised world.
In these artworks, Shonibare combines imagery of angels, representations of African masks, cowboy tropes of the American West, and his signature waxprint fabrics. Each print contains a cowboy with angel wings and a face substituted by a canonical type of African mask, with the word 'Angel' written above. Shonibare said they're 'a reflection on the zeitgeist at a time of xenophobia, racism and the election of Donald Trump'.
