Yinka ShonibareMonument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul, 2024
Commissioned for the Nigerian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition, "Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul" is a major new work by Yinka Shonibare CBE.
Emmanuel Macron declared in 2017 when visiting Burkina Faso "In the next five years, I want the conditions to be met for the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa"...
Yinka Shonibare CBE explores in this major new work, the debates around restitution, exploring one of the greatest thefts of heritage and memory of a people. The Benin expedition of 1897 led to the looting of thousands of valuable spiritual and cultural artefacts from the Kingdom of Benin. The sheer scale of the theft is impossible to fully recreate. In this work, the artist recreates a small percentage of the stolen artefacts made from clay and displayed on a pyramid structure.
Hidden mongst the objects is the bust of Sir Harry Rawson - one of the military commanders who led the punative expedition of British forces to Benin. Encased in a Vitrine, Rawson is displayed like many of the stolen objects in museum collections across Britain today. Benin objects displayed on the ziggurat include the head of an Oba, currently held in the Royal Collection and an Ivory mask of Idia - the first Queen Mother of 16th C Benin held in the British Museum. The mask was notably used as the emblem of FESTAC 77 Festival Nigeria where a recreation was made after the UK refused the loan request. A cockerel known as "okukur" was taken to Britain and passed privately through collections before being gifted to Jesus College, Cambridge. A student led campaign in 2019 forced the return of the work to Nigeria, making it the first Institution in the world to return a Benin bronze artefact.
Using clay, the artist draws a parallel to African evironmental intelligence and spirituality. While earlier generations have sought to identify African relationships to nature through the lens of primitavism, the artist here suggests the indigenous forms of knowledge which celebrate and achievements of pre colonial African civilisations.
