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00:00how would I describe myself as a person a sense of humor and not taking myself
00:12too seriously it's very important to be positive I've always felt that your
00:18experience of life is going to be about your attitude to life so if you have a
00:25negative attitude to life then it's probably likely that you will have
00:31negative experiences I don't quite know how I would survive disability without
00:37the art I've been able to feel valued through my work and also the work is also
00:46giving me an occupation something to actually occupy my time and a good reason
00:53to celebrate life I make eclectic art I make art about my background being
01:04Nigerian and British there are dark elements to it but they're also very
01:11colorful and playful elements to it if you've got something to say in your
01:16work you do have to find a way to engage people and I find that you know making
01:22something beautiful is a good way to start a conversation
01:28I think it's not so easy to explain why I wanted to be an artist except I know that
01:53when I was young I was really kind of contrary anyway like so if my parents wanted me to do one
01:57thing I wouldn't want to do that one to do something else I was born in Britain but I
02:07moved to Nigeria when I was very young so I had a lot of my childhood in Nigeria
02:12that's funny Safari suits were really fashionable in the 70s I think yeah that's a picture of a drama I
02:24painted when I was painted when I was really young in Nigeria you know in Nigeria people used to paint
02:29pictures of drummers and musicians and so I remember doing that when I was really young
02:34probably must have been about maybe 14 or something how did they get hold of that yeah I've not seen these pictures for a very long time
02:44oh great that's a picture of my dad my father was a lawyer and my mother looked after us at home I guess you might describe my family as a middle-class family we maintained a home in London and and we used to come to London for our summer holidays
03:08you know my brother is you know my brother is a surgeon and my other brother is a banker and my sister is a dentist
03:17and so I'm the kind of unusual one who chose to be an artist and my father would have actually preferred me to do law
03:27but that's very typical of a lot of Nigerian families you know they want you to be a lawyer a doctor or an accountant
03:35or an engineer and so it's quite unusual to step outside of that and become a visual artist
03:42that's my school English boarding school in Andover but I don't want people to get the wrong impression of me because I'm not that kind of person
03:55I'm not a boarding school type
03:57but um anyway I yes I uh came to England to I go to boarding school but you know I wasn't there for very long
04:09you know I was there to kind of finish my A-levels
04:11my parents been you know really strict about education you know so um you know those were the times of me coming back to the UK
04:21we had some good times there but I couldn't wait to kind of finish school then go to art school
04:28after that
04:31it was while I was at Wimbledon School of Art that I got a virus infection in my spine
04:43uh which left me completely paralyzed
04:48I just remember walking down the stairs and then just blacking out
04:53and then somebody tried to resuscitate me and they called the ambulance
04:58and then two weeks later I woke up in hospital
05:02um I'd been in a coma for about two weeks
05:05and then um and then I tried to get up and then I was told I couldn't get up
05:13and then I was shocked to find that I was completely paralyzed from my neck down
05:19and um and it took the recovery took a very long time you know I was in hospital for about a year
05:25and then I had to learn to walk to dress myself
05:31um you know I had to kind of do everything from scratch
05:35but I have to say that actually being an artist kind of helped a lot
05:39because um I could actually focus on trying to do my art again
05:46it was kind of just also learning how to do everything
05:49learning how to draw again
05:51uh because obviously I had some recovery but not full recovery
05:56so I had to learn how to draw with my hands again
06:01how to do everything again
06:03so it was a kind of a really tough journey
06:06but I was determined to get back into what I was doing before that
06:09which was to go to art school
06:12and um you know get back to my art
06:15yeah
06:16I got into Goldsmiths College where I did my MA
06:29it was a very exciting time at Goldsmiths in the context of the sort of young British artists
06:36I was there when the whole kind of YBA thing started happening
06:40the work was quite controversial very anti-establishment and many artists like Damien Hirst
06:47Sarah Lucas came out of that generation
06:52Goldsmiths was almost like a sort of military exercise which could be really brutal
06:58in your year you had to make a presentation to the group and then people would sort of criticise that
07:04what you did and so you have to be really good at defending what you were doing and also really strong
07:11because you would be you know people were in tears on that MA and
07:17but in a way I thought it was kind of good for me in the sense that
07:23if I make a show and I get a terrible review in you know in a paper
07:29I'm not bothered about it because I've been there it's nothing compared to
07:33what I had to kind of go through when I was at college
07:36I don't actually think you know the next generation would accept any of that level of criticism
07:43but I think with my generation you had to deal with a lot of stuff
07:48growing up in Nigeria I didn't really experience racism I didn't quite know what racism was
08:00and then you know coming to London was actually an eye-opener
08:03that's when I actually discovered that there was such a thing as racism
08:07the concept of being a black artist didn't occur to me really until
08:12I came to London that you know I was just an artist
08:15at the start of things I guess you know I left college
08:20and it took really about six years to work to be with a commercial gallery
08:24I actually remember people saying in a commercial gallery saying
08:29well you know we we don't want to take on black artists
08:33because we can't you know we can't sell the work
08:36you know I mean people were saying that you know that was completely normal then
08:42there were not many role models of very successful black artists when I left art school
08:49I had to devise ways of you know making myself heard and my work to be received
08:56and I wanted to see if there was a way of actually transcending those barriers
09:03and seeing if those barriers could somehow be pushed down and find a way of doing it
09:15well yes I mean I think that things were not easy then there was a lot of discrimination
09:24it was actually quite difficult for many many black artists
09:31and I had to find a way to you know to be heard
09:37oh gosh 1997 that's probably the year of that's the year of sensation at the Royal Academy
09:53I was in that exhibition and many of the artists who also went to Goldsmiths were also in that exhibition
10:00that was probably my first time of actually visiting the Royal Academy as well
10:07because as younger artists we used to avoid the Royal Academy
10:11because it was seen as kind of a bit old fashioned in those days
10:16a lot of people went to see that show and there were queues around the block
10:21and then that kind of got me started off you know I started being invited to do a lot of international exhibitions
10:27and so that's how my career kind of started
10:32since that show I've got to know the Royal Academy quite well
10:39it's a place where I go to quite often
10:43I often visit galleries with Rachel
10:48Rachel is my partner
10:50we've been together for just over ten years
10:53we have similar interests so we do do a lot of things together
10:58I've got work here
11:04I'm quite surprised because I didn't realise that they've got the work up
11:11a lot of my art is about my own journey
11:15growing up in Nigeria and now living in Britain
11:19the history of the relationship with Africa has always been interesting to me
11:25as it forms part of my identity
11:27so therefore I'm then interested in the artists of that period
11:32particularly the 18th and the 19th century
11:35I was attracted to Hogarth because of the way he mocked the aristocracy
11:44I thought it was very funny
11:46a number of funny characters in this one
11:50I can imagine there were some really eccentric characters of the time
11:56particularly that chap there
11:58you want this one?
11:59yeah
12:00you know the way his hair and the
12:03you know I mean that was the style of the time of course
12:05but it seemed like a sort of like a dandy
12:07and I've always been interested in kind of eccentrically dressed characters
12:13you know I mean on the whole
12:15I do the whole project on dandies
12:17and I've always been interested in kind of oddballs I guess
12:20or mavericks as well
12:22yeah
12:24one of the reasons those kinds of characters appeal to me
12:28is because dandies have always been people slightly outside of the establishment
12:34I relate very much to people who think about creative ways of doing new things
12:41rather than just following the crowd
12:43I think many artists kind of feel like outsiders
12:50you know I mean I used to even when I was a lot younger
12:53I used to kind of just go for solitary you know walks and write poetry and that kind of thing
12:58so that's a feeling I've always had anyway
13:02like feeling kind of somehow different
13:05and then of course you know being of Nigerian origin living in the UK
13:09and then with a disability and maybe that's even much more kind of exaggerated
13:15but it's never been a kind of barrier it's if anything I've actually
13:21it's been a source of creativity rather than being a barrier to anything
13:28and I also like feeling different I like being different
13:33that was a radical project at the time
13:40it's a series of photographs I made in 1999
13:45dandies are essentially outsiders but often because of their dress they get noticed
13:58I just wanted to have this image of the African dandy
14:03and I didn't want a negative image of a black man
14:07this was at a time when there were lots of negative images of black people
14:12and I'd be looking at the paintings of Hogarth
14:17and I'd see that the black person in the image would be either the valet
14:23or the servant or somehow subservient in some way or the other
14:28and so I wanted to transform that
14:33I had posters all around in the London Underground about 40 posters
14:39I was definitely one of the first people to do that in London
14:44and I wanted to sort of expand the audience
14:49and have just people going about their daily business experience the work
14:55rather than having to go into a gallery to do that
14:58it was kind of groundbreaking at the time
15:01you know I think it's probably very usual now
15:04but it was unusual then
15:07yeah
15:12the virus I got was called transverse myelitis
15:17I've managed to make quite a lot of recovery since
15:22I was actually walking around until I was about 50 years old
15:26and but I've had to take a wheelchair
15:32because I was kind of having falls
15:35it wasn't pleasant
15:36and so that's why I'm using a wheelchair now
15:39first time I dealt with disability in my work was
15:45when I made you know Dorian Gray
15:48so based on a novel
15:50the picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
15:53it was a piece made up of 12 photographs
15:56obviously disability is very much about
16:00you know the body
16:03how people see you
16:06and when I came across the picture of Dorian Gray
16:10you know the story is really about the dilemma of aging
16:14and also the transformation of the body
16:19and I wanted to explore that in my own work
16:24through my own body
16:26you know with a disability you can see your body transforming
16:31you have a different awareness of yourself outside of the body
16:39and naturally you are vain like everybody else
16:44and there's a struggle to keep that sense of youth
16:48but then your body doesn't necessarily express the ideal
16:53and then dealing with a kind of judgment of who you are
16:57and so in terms of tackling the question of the body and disability
17:04I think Dorian Gray is the work in which I first kind of confronted that issue head on
17:14it was obvious that I would use myself because
17:17you know unfortunately I am concerned with myself
17:21or you know I'm kind of self-obsessed like most artists
17:25and you know so naturally I started working with myself
17:30and using my own body to sort of express what I'm trying to express
17:37Well I mean I think all artists are kind of vain in a way
17:43I mean they are you know all artists have kind of massive egos
17:48because why would you actually do something as crazy as being an artist you know
17:53so I think yeah so it's just kind of also dealing with that kind of thinking
18:00it's kind of self-critical as well
18:03so you know thinking why would you want to always be at the centre of everything
18:09because all artists in a way they are at the centre of their world
18:14and there's a degree of you know being kind of self-critical about that as well
18:21but then it's not possible to be an artist if you won't put yourself at the centre of everything
18:30Oh here it is actually
18:31Naseri Fabrics number 38
18:33What?
18:34Here
18:35Yes that's my fabric
18:37fabric shop in Brixton
18:39Are you okay?
18:40Yeah yeah I'm fine yeah yeah
18:42I'm a bit slow but I'm fine
18:43This is from a documentary made by Swedish television in 2004
18:50This is my favourite fabric shop and this is where I buy my fabrics from
18:56People might say to me well you know well why are you always using the same fabrics
19:02why don't you just use other things
19:05but I see that as I see my career really as a book and each new piece I make is the next chapter
19:15and I use the fabric as a way to hold my audience in the same through the same story
19:21So I am simply throughout my life I guess until I die writing different chapters of one single book
19:30You know I think I will just take this colour and then I think I'm done
19:36This gentleman is a special customer we always give him special prices
19:42At first they didn't quite understand why I was buying you know so much from them
19:50and but they soon kind of got used to me going in there
19:55and so they were always very happy when they saw me because they knew I was going to buy quite a lot of them
20:04Let's go for this one
20:07I like the fact that the patterns are not geometrical
20:11so it might make the image a bit softer
20:18I use batik in my work and batik is usually known as African textiles
20:26I started using it because I was expected to produce authentic African art as a black artist
20:33an idea which I find ridiculous
20:35You know I mean should British people make work about Morris dancing
20:39Would that be authentic enough? I mean about Englishness
20:43What does that mean you know?
20:45I like playing with the idea of authenticity as batik is not African at all
20:49It's a fabric created by the Dutch and the British
20:52inspired by Indonesian textiles
20:55I kind of thought okay if you want me to be a real African I'm going to use
21:02you know Dutch fabric to express my real African necks
21:10There was a time when as an artist of African origin you're expected to be
21:17you know very kind of serious and knowing all the time
21:24and you know kind of wearing your politics and your sleeves to wear
21:29but I just kind of think that actually I also have a right to have fun with my work
21:37I don't I should not be obliged to make you know a very particular kind of thing
21:44you know I can I can have fun with it
21:47you know so it's also and that in itself is actually a political statement
21:52that you're you feel free enough to um to kind of indulge a bit in what you're doing
22:00you know it's your right to actually do that
22:03I learned that
22:25Max was
22:29my girlfriend at the time and I think we were together for about five years or so we you know
22:40went to I did great things together traveled and all that and yeah lots of them conversations
22:52discussion you know Maxwell was studying she was doing a doctorate degree in expanded cinema and so
23:00it was both intellectually engaging and yeah so that's an image of that time together I guess
23:15yeah that's um it's kind of emotional yeah
23:27but um what can I say that was then yeah
23:45the winner of one of art's most prestigious and controversial awards the Turner Prize will be
23:50announced tonight David Sillito has been looking at the nominations it appears both beautiful and
23:56perhaps slightly baffling Yinka Shonibare who was brought up in Nigeria paints and sculpts
24:01his art is deliberately sumptuous but subtly subversive being nominated for the Turner Prize
24:09is unbelievable really because it's recognized globally all over the world it means that actually
24:21you know my efforts are respected and acknowledged and I hope that that then means that I will be
24:31able to actually say more of what I'm trying to say with my work and get heard
24:36the winner of this year's 2004 Turner Prize it is Jeremy Della
24:46I didn't like not winning you know as somebody of Nigerian background I mean you know you have to win
25:01I mean if you said to my dad that oh you know you were second I mean it'd be like well yeah you were second but
25:08why what you know why not first I mean why second you know you can't really be excited about that why
25:15why why haven't you won you know um but it didn't really affect my career badly
25:22not winning um it was okay not to win um I don't like competitions anyway I don't think art is a
25:31competition but if I was in a competition I would have liked to have won it you know
25:37I think art is a way of making the ordinary um extraordinary it's the form of alchemy uh it's
26:02basically making gold out of nothing it's something that can make us see the world in a different way
26:09and I think that's the power of art it's about beauty it's about melancholy it's about politics
26:17it's about activism and I think good work should be able to work on all those different levels
26:23that's what I kind of hope to make something that pleases as well as challenges as well as creates
26:31confusion um sometimes as an artist you don't entirely always know what what you're doing is
26:39actually entirely about sometimes you know it's just whimsical uh which is also fine
26:46I love the canals of East London I could spend hours there I just love them they're quiet spaces
26:59with no cars you know it can be very calm and slow right in the middle of London and of course that's
27:06why I've got a you know studio facing the canal I have two studios uh this one we're in here and then
27:14just one down the road having the flexibility to work the way I want to is really important for an artist
27:25I think my greatest fear is running out of money if you have a disability you have to have
27:33the things that will make you feel comfortable I have a team of eight people working for me
27:40managing some of the bigger projects and also helping me in the studio I've been drawing digitally now
27:47for about 10 years which is a more efficient way for me to work the great thing about doing work
27:55digitally is that you don't have to when I used to paint I used to have to mix the colors and I don't
28:02how to do that I can just select any color and most importantly you don't get your clothes dirty
28:10I'm kind of doing a series of works at the moment based on the relationship between enslaved labor
28:17and you know and the crops are produced by enslaved labor I'm drawing a crop it's a plantation crop
28:27it's cotton but kind of done because of in my own style kind of thing
28:36as an outsider my work has actually enabled me to feel much more I included I've always used my work
28:46as a way so I can get people to pay attention to what I'm trying to say
28:50I think I try to devise a way to get my work into the system you know rather than actually standing
28:58outside of the system and shouting at the system that's where the kind of trickstuffing comes in
29:04really in a way that people are kind of just tricked rather than knowing that I'm actually confronting them
29:11with a gun and then realizing you know once they've been absorbed into my world you know realizing actually
29:20that this stuff is is actually quite lethal but not realizing that immediately well what can I say
29:32I'm surprised by some of the footage I kind of same
29:35um well full of myself it's really confident in what I was saying you know and I don't know if
29:47I'd be as self-assured now I mean I just think that I mean obviously it's not literally confronting
29:55people with guns um so I'm not a violent person but I think that um but it's important that the work
30:03does speak to people so it's the kind of Trojan horse method and then people can find out that actually
30:11the work is actually more serious than it looks and it's dealing with important issues
30:16I have no idea how my work would be different if um I didn't have a disability uh but I do things in
30:35the way that works for me and disability has probably made me more creative in the way that I approach things
30:46I know that if I can't make something I can delegate you know I can I can actually have the idea
30:54and then have it fabricated by people who can actually fabricate it
30:59it's all the different ways I work you know I mean I do print making I do drawing I do bigger public
31:04sculpture as well and I can design things and then have them fabricated but I mean I think
31:13other artists don't work that differently from the way that I do really because um you know if you're a
31:19film director you're not going to act every part or if you're an architect you're not going to make
31:23every brick on the building but I mean it's still your building you've designed it it's not really
31:29possible for you to fabricate everything yourself anyway regardless of disability or not but I'm sure
31:34uh my disability has affected some of the way in which I work um but I I'm not sure how different
31:42the work would be if I didn't have a disability
31:45I got a call to do the fourth place in Trafalgar Square I was very excited about it it's a very
31:56prestigious project and I knew that a lot would change after getting that project because people
32:02who'd never heard of me would know who I was my encounter with Boris that was uh that was interesting
32:12yeah
32:19because it's Trafalgar Square it seemed obvious to me that I should do something about
32:24Nelson I wanted it to be relevant to the history of the place
32:28and then I thought well you know simple idea stick Nelson's ship in a bottle change the cells
32:34and that's it it's also a magical piece everyone knows what the ship in the bottle is and so I
32:41wanted to do this magical thing but with a very serious story behind it that work was literally seen
32:49by millions of people every hour you know so I think that's probably my my biggest one so far
32:57it was actually a real game changer for my career and it was on the street which I
33:06loved that's a unique privilege to be given that space uh in Trafalgar Square
33:13so what do you think of Yinka's work I think it was good awesome beautiful as his brother you know I'm
33:20delighted he puts our names up in lights I don't I no longer have to spell my name when I introduce
33:25myself to people and um just as a member of the public I think he's made a great contribution to
33:31British art and uh to an important space I have to say that I'm just uh completely
33:40well seriously moved by people's response uh to the piece art really did help me to survive
33:48so art for our sake is extremely important you can explore our history and you can explore our
33:56identity issues and uh so you know I should like to say you know just continue your support for us
34:04artists and the arts generally thank you very much indeed
34:07it's very important that we make the arts accessible and that people can actually engage
34:18with something and not feel that they have to belong to a special club you know to experience art
34:26and so I think that's why I like public art because it democratizes
34:30the experience of art everyone can enjoy in the street and they don't need to have a lot of time
34:37they just need to be walking by
34:39and that's when I got my my MBE and my CBE yeah
35:09There was surprise that I'd accept that.
35:13Some people were outraged, and I did.
35:15But I just felt that it's actually more subversive
35:20to actually accept it than not.
35:24It's so predictable for me to turn it down,
35:27given my background.
35:29And as an artist, you don't want to be predictable.
35:31I mean, that's been done.
35:33I think it's better to be in a position
35:36where your voice actually does matter,
35:39rather than being on the margins.
35:41And I felt that just staying on the margins
35:44doesn't actually help anything.
35:46So I deliberately accepted it.
35:52My father would have loved it.
35:53My father was a royalist, and he loved the royal family.
35:57So he would have been really pleased.
35:59Yeah.
36:04Yeah, that's the house.
36:05So Anne-Marie, that's my house.
36:07This one here on the right?
36:08That's where he grew up.
36:10That was my first visit to Nigeria
36:13after many years of not going back.
36:16Probably after about 30 years or something
36:18of not going back to Nigeria.
36:20How are you?
36:24You know, that's just memories.
36:26You know, seeing my mother,
36:29she's no longer with us.
36:32Welcome to Nigeria.
36:34I'm moving to say that again.
36:37Yeah.
36:39My son.
36:44He's very tall now.
36:45He's actually taller than me.
36:47Yeah.
36:48Living in two places is kind of very interesting.
36:50Psychologically, what it sort of does to your head,
36:55cause you're kind of torn.
36:56You're no longer of that place that you left.
37:07But then you're kind of nostalgic about it.
37:10Show me a visa.
37:11I want to see your passport.
37:13But then you can never actually return to that place.
37:17So your relationship to it can never be as it was.
37:21But your memory of it is almost kind of better than the reality of it.
37:27Oh, yes.
37:28Yeah.
37:29It's a kind of utopian nostalgia that cannot never be fulfilled.
37:40I think being back in that place with the language,
37:43with the people and the food and everything,
37:46you realize you've missed something.
37:49But you can never have a childhood relationship with somewhere again.
37:55So you have to find a way of creating a new adult relationship with that place.
38:14What do you feel proudest of?
38:15I think I'm proudest of my foundation and the work of my foundation.
38:21More than any of my work, yeah.
38:24My foundation is called the Yinka Shunibare Foundation.
38:27We have offices in London and Nigeria.
38:30It's about supporting international as well as the local artists.
38:37I feel that's work that will go on beyond me.
38:41So I think it's actually important and it's making a very strong social statement here.
38:49I wanted to create spaces for other outsiders like myself.
38:53And I think that outsider feeling might be some of the impulse that actually drives me to want to create spaces for the refuge of others.
39:10I actually built a house for artists in Lagos and then three hours out of the city.
39:20They also have a farmhouse where artists could actually go and do residencies.
39:26Because I think it's important to provide a platform for the next generation of artists.
39:41I wanted to have a place for artists, but I also know that it's important to acknowledge the grassroots, to acknowledge local people.
39:50And so the idea of the farm is to provide the opportunity for food sustainability, for local people to actually grow their food near where they are.
39:59I'm in a kind of fortunate position of being able to make some kind of contribution to the world.
40:12And, you know, I've always believed that social practice is important and that artists should have some kind of impact socially.
40:22That's what I think is the power that art can have.
40:26I think my life has gone, I would say better than planned, because with my physical disabilities, I didn't think I would be, I'd get as far as I've managed to get.
40:44My journey and my success has actually shocked me as well, because I had no idea that I could actually get to this level with it.
40:59And also I've been able to do a lot of things just through the art.
41:05So it's on many, many different levels, the art has kind of helped me a lot.
41:12Yeah.
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