Yinka Shonibare MBE’s Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) (excerpt)

The present lot consists of masks used in one of Yinka Shonibare CBE's Tableaux Vivants, which are three-dimensional reconstructions of scenes taken from Western art history or literature. Shonibare’s mise-en-scènes almost always feature several characters engaged in dynamic scenarios riddled with contradictions, ideas of contamination, colonialism, globalisation and even notions of frivolity and villainy.

Un Ballo in Maschera earns its title from a 1859 opera of the same name written by Guiseppe Verdi. The piece draws inspiration from the assassination of Swedish King Gustav III at a masquerade evening event in 1792.

The present lot are examples of the Venetian style masks worn by the actors in Shonibare's film. As with many of the artist's tableaux vivants, Un Ballo in Maschera features characters dressed in colonialist European garb. These costumes, although European in form, are heavily 'Africanized' by the use of a variety of Dutch wax fabrics in their construction.

Shonibare has created a broad repertoire of work consisting of painting, sculpture, photography and film, commenting on the genesis of cultural and nationalistic identity in a post-colonial world. Influenced by his own British Nigerian culture, the artist explores questions of cultural hybridity as well as what it means to be African in a contemporary and globalized context.

Released in 2004, Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball), has been shown at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and the Dallas Museum of Art, amongst other locations.