By Japhet Alakam

The year 2013 was a very busy year for the Nigerian visual art scene, as artists both in the  country and outside exhibited widely in many galleries all over the world. And this year, it has started with several exhibitions in Nigeria, and in far away Philadelphia, Yinka Shonibare, a British artist of Nigerian descent, opened his year with a unique exhibition tagged Magic Ladders.

The award winning artist, who has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe with notable exhibitions including a monumental public sculpture in Trafalgar Square and a mid-career retrospective at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art creates works that cites the artistic and intellectual history of Europe.

The exhibition which is put together by The Barnes Foundation opened on Friday, January 24, at the Barnes’ Parkway home, Philadelphia, US and will remain on view in the special exhibitions gallery through Monday,   April 21.

It features approximately 15 sculptures, paintings, photographs and a room installation, the primary displays are life-size (or larger) mannequins dressed in colorful Dutch-wax fabrics, that are
produced in Europe but closely associated with African prints and patterns. The work alludes to European art and intellectual history and explores race, slavery, authenticity, politics and commerce.

The show focuses on weighty themes including education, enlightenment, race, identity and authenticity, all through installations of vividly adorned sculpture and large paintings. It is his first major exhibition in Philadelphia, since his residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in 2004.

Shonibare’s sculptures offer a provocative examination of European colonialism and European and African identities. The artist also investigates the idea of the outsider, intrigued and perhaps drawn to a dominant culture yet remaining distinct from and peripheral to it.

Shonibare, who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004, was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2005 by Queen Elizabeth II. He uses his title professionally, if ironically, to highlight  the ambiguous nature of status, identity, and belonging.

The Foundation’s collaboration with Shonibare pays homage to Barnes’s interest in contemporary art  and artists. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the Barnes commission Magic Ladders, which explores childhood learning and the opportunities that education can create. In considering the exhibition and commission, the artist reviewed the complicated and decades-long correspondence between Barnes and Leo Stein, a fellow collector and an important advisor and friend as Barnes built his art collection and educational foundation.

Some of the works includes, Look for Big Boy, an androgynous, headless and racially ambiguous figure that symbolizes the mythological trickster and references the characterization of the Victorian-era dandy, Just beyond Big Boy, The Age of Enlightenment series depicts famous philosophers working at their craft, Scramble for Africa comments on the historic Berlin Conference, when the African continent was divided into countries.

But perhaps the most exciting aspect of the installation is the brand-new work, Magic Ladders, a three-sculpture series commissioned by the Barnes Foundation, and supported by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. In Magic Ladders., three children ascend ladders constructed of books written or read by Albert Barnes. Other recent sculptures in the exhibition, Planets in My Head, Philosophy (201 1); Planets in My Head, Physics (2010); and Pedagogy Boy/Boy (2011), echo the theme of the magical, transformative discoveries of childhood learning.

The exhibition invites viewers to reflect upon Barnes’s collecting practice, particularly in terms of its  connections to colonialism. One of the first American collectors to regard African sculpture as fine art rather than ethnographic curiosity, Barnes displayed African masks and figures alongside paintings by Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. A champion of education for African Americans, Barnes made his collection of African art broadly available to black readers through Opportunity magazine.

Ironically, his acquisition of African art was made possible by the imperialist colonization of Africa, a theme explored in Shonibare’s monumental Scramble for Africa (2003).

Speaking about the exhibition, Judith Dolkart, Deputy Director of Art and Archival Collections at The Barnes Foundation said. “I think it’s a pretty magical exhibition. This show, in many ways, touches on the core mission of the Barnes.”

Shonibare has created a brand new piece for the show that has a personal connection to the foundation  -the magic ladders that give the exhibit its name.

“For this work, Shonibare was very much interested in themes of enlightenment and education, opportunity and social mobility, all issues which were of interest to Dr. Barnes. He created a work that really relates to Barnes himself. The rungs of these ladders are constructed of books, and the titles of the books are all derived from Barnes’ own library. So most of them have titles related to art history, and each ladder has a child climbing up, furthering the idea that education brings opportunity, an ability to rise. That’s something that Barnes very much believed in. This show, in many ways, through its exploration of identity and social mobility, enlightenment, touches on the core mission of the Barnes,”  she said.

Yinka Shonibare MBE: Magic Ladders has been organized by Judith F. Dolkart, deputy director of art
and archival collections and Gund Family Chief Curator. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 84-page book by Ms. Dolkart, containing a short essay and entries for works in the exhibition, some of them accompanied by reproductions of documents from the archive of the Barnes Foundation.