House 2014 presents Yinka Shonibare MBE

HOUSE 2014 PRESENTS YINKA SHONIBARE MBE : THE BRITISH LIBRARY AT THE OLD REFERENCE LIBRARY, BRIGHTON MUSEUM & ART GALLERY

3rd May – 25 May 2014

A HOUSE 2014 and Brighton Festival co-commission

Yinka Shonibare MBE’s new site-specific installation explores the impact of immigration on all aspects of British culture and considers notions of territory and place, cultural identity, displacement and refuge.

Brighton Museum’s Old Reference Library becomes a repository for those, both celebrated and unfamiliar, who as immigrants to this country, made unique contributions to what we regard as ‘British’ culture. Filled with books colourfully bound in Shonibare’s trademark wax cloth (itself a cross-cultural hybrid of Indonesian design and Dutch manufacture), the gold embossed spines identify individuals such as T.S. Eliot, Henry James, Hans Holbein, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zaha Hadid, Mick Jagger, Darcey Bussell, George Frideric Handel, Hammasa Kohistani, Liam Gallagher and Noel Gallagher, Amartya Sena, Anish Kapoor and many more.

Yinka Shonibare MBE’s work makes visible the cultural influences of colonisation and explores the rich complexity of post-colonial cultures. The British Library asks us to evaluate our attitudes to immigration and immigrants.