In 2021 the Cincinnati Art Museum unveiled a new colorful outdoor sculpture by artist Yinka Shonibare. Titled Wind Sculpture (SG) IX, Shonibare made this large-scale (22 feet tall!) mixed-media work from stainless steel, hand-painted glass, and reinforced polyester. The artist covered his creation in vibrant blues and oranges and punctuated its curved surfaces with organic, flowing shapes. The work’s form mimics a piece of fabric, tossed and frozen in the air on its way down to the ground.

Yinka Shonibare (b. 1962) is a British Nigerian artist known for his kaleidoscopic and large-scale works across various mediums including painting, film, sculpture, photography, and installation. Although he is a jack of many trades, Shonibare’s craftsmanship truly stands out in his outdoor sculptural works. Adorned in bright saturated colors and intricate patterns, his sculptures mirror the qualities of African fabrics and textiles and reflect topics such as colonialism, trade, identity, and world politics.

Shonibare has a particular fascination with fabrics and textiles that tell complex and nuanced stories of how they found their way to certain parts of the world, highlighting the colonial dynamics of their origin and arrival. For example, certain fabrics took root in West African culture after Dutch colonizers brought them from Indonesia. Shonibare’s work seeks to explore the cultural impacts of colonization and globalization on various societies and the ways in which marginalized people have reclaimed and redefined these impacts into aesthetic expressions.

You can find Wind Sculpture (SG) IX standing at the end of the accessibility ramp leading up to the museum’s main entrance. Come see it!