Comprado con fondos de la Sociedad de Arte del Estado de Carolina del Norte (legado de Robert F. Phifer)
Eleanor Hewitt was a 19th-century art collector who traveled throughout Europe extensively. The objects she and her sister collected while traveling are now in the collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. The headless figure depicted by this sculpture is supported on wooden stilts and is dressed in a late Victorian-era dress made from Dutch wax-printed cotton fabric.
By elevating the figure on stilts so that she towers above the viewer, the artist uses Hewitt as a symbol of Western countries and their legacy of imperialism and colonialism.
Yinka Shonibare is known for his sculptural figures dressed in 19th-century costumes. He describes the Dutch wax cloth worn by figures such as Eleanor Hewitt as follows:
The fabrics I use also look like they could be just African, because they are used a lot there. But what you see on the surface is not really what you always get. The fabric has a complicated history in its trade routes: It was originally designed as an Indonesian fabric, produced by the Dutch, and the British sold it into the African market. It’s a perfect metaphor for multilayered identities.
Shonibare’s work often challenges viewers’ perceptions of cultural identity. His work explores power, examines the achievements and failures of Western civilization, and creates connections between diverse histories and cultures.
tags: culture, fashion, history, meaning, place
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