'We

should

not

erase

history':

Yinka

Shonibare

on

his

new

exhibition

and

the

impact

of

imperial

ambition

Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill and Sir Charles Napier statues are dressed to impress in Dutch wax fabrics but stripped of their bronze, marble and their power.

An intention of Turner Prize-nominated artist Yinka Shonibare, who says we should question colonial history - not topple it.

He told Sky News: "I personally don't think that, you know, you should be pulling statues down. I think that, in the same way that you wouldn't go into a library and start burning all the books you didn't like.

"I don't think you can erase history."

Shonibare's nuanced view comes at a time when there is vociferous debate on the role statues play, from colonialist Cecil Rhodes at an Oxford college to 17th-century slave merchant Edward Colston - whose statue was pulled down in 2020 and rolled into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest.

"I think that, the best thing to do is to create platforms in which people can actually have a debate to have a conversation. We also know that a person of the 19th century has different values.

"They're not the same as a person now. And so I think that we can't necessarily conflate the 19th century with us. So I think we need some perspective. I think that, but we should not, erase history."

In his new exhibition Suspended States at London's Serpentine Gallery, the artist looks at the impact of imperial ambition.