Prospero\u27s Monsters: Authenticity, Identity, and Hybridity in the Post-Colonial Age

Between April 17th and May 17th, 2008, London-born, Nigerian-raised artist Yinka Shonibare’s work was exhibited at the James Cohan Gallery in New York City in a show entitled Prospero’s Monsters. The show was organized into three galleries – “La Méduse”, “The Age of Enlightenment” and “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” – each of which contained works of the same name. This study will focus on the bookends of the show, the first and last galleries, which consisted of seven works in total, in the first: the La Méduse multimedia sculpture/diorama and chromogenic print and in the second, the five piece The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters series, each of which references a particular continent (Africa, Europe, America, Australia, Asia). While the entire exhibition is saturated with references to the Age of Enlightenment, unlike the gallery of the same name (which focuses on selected Enlightenment Age thinkers), the La Méduse and The Sleep of Reason galleries have more direct allusions to highly recognizable European artworks – Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa and Francisco Goya y Luciente’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters respectively. Framed by the captivating title of the exhibition and the complex character relationships in the play which inspired it, studying both La Méduse and The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters allows for a thorough exploration of the motifs of identity, hybridity, and authenticity that Yinka Shonibare MBE has addressed throughout his career. Here he engages them by combining overt and often satirical references to Western art history, as well as utilizing the “African” Dutch Wax cloth or batik, both of which critique and challenge assumptions about African art. Together these elements create works that not only echoes Shonibare’s personal dual identity as a British and Nigerian artist, but also touch upon the international categorization of Black artists in the contemporary art world