THE BRITISH LIBRARY 2014

Editor: We’re looking at "The British Library" by Yinka Shonibare, made in 2014. It's a mixed-media installation, featuring a bookcase filled with books covered in vibrant, colorful textiles. It's incredibly striking, so bold! How do you read the choice of materials and their effect on the overall meaning, knowing it's called "The British Library?" Curator: I'm immediately drawn to the fabrication. The books themselves, ordinary objects, are elevated through this laborious process of being re-covered. But what’s crucial is the specific textile: African wax print fabric, a material with its own complex history of trade and cultural appropriation. Editor: Appropriation seems to be a major element. Curator: Precisely. The work uses this fabric—which is often perceived as authentically African, but was originally produced in Europe, specifically the Netherlands—to cover books by prominent figures. Are these books signifiers of authority? How does the colonial history embedded within the materials disrupt traditional notions of knowledge production within a space like 'The British Library?' Shonibare asks us to consider the labor and the historical trajectory of these materials. Editor: So it’s not just about aesthetics; it’s a deliberate commentary on how culture and identity are constructed and commodified. Is he suggesting that knowledge itself can be seen as a product? Curator: Absolutely! He's challenging this notion of high culture by utilizing elements of craft and design and injecting them directly into a historically established arena of knowledge. The installation points to a social hierarchy embedded even in the act of reading and learning, using material history to bring it to light. Editor: That's really changed my perception of it. I was initially focused on the visual impact of the pattern and color. Curator: Shonibare often plays with beauty and allure to lure the viewer in, then slowly unfolds this challenging investigation on themes of colonialism and identity, doesn’t he? A very skillful manipulator of materiality.