Art:21 Artist

Art:21 Series artist:

Yinka Shonibare was focused on the theme featured in Transformation.

He grew up in Nigeria and studied art in London. He is known for his costume dioramas that explore current issues of race, and culture identity. He is physically disabled after being paralyzed form a spinal virus he caught as a child. His art employs paintings, sculpture, photography and film.

I can help students connect the idea of transformation to their lives by helping them understand the theme. This artist based his art from the world around him and how he fit within the world. He is disabled and didn’t really grow up in a place where race was an issue. He expressed the transformation of his disability and his culture in his art. I will show the students how Yinka used his art and the culture and history of a place to express his art. We can also look at how he used a story line in his film work, just like they use in Literature.

We can look at the idea of Transformation and compare and contrast this enduring idea to other artists. Art: 21 has a list of other artist under this idea topic. We can view or read about that new artist and relook at Yinka’s artwork. We can also look at different artist backgrounds and history to compare with the theme of Transformation. This way we could research the individual artist’s definitions of the theme of Transformation.

I like the idea of presenting a theme to a whole class and having them base an artwork from that theme. Most of the time we come up with a theme together and discuss the possibilities of where that theme can take us. After viewing and researching a theme, I would be interested to know where my students would go with it. I would prompt them with questions about transformation. We would look at their personal feeling of transformation and how they would express that through artwork. I think if we make it personal a student would become more invested in their work and would explore the theme on their own as well.