Churchill statue painted in African print is ‘hypocritical’
AN EXHIBITION featuring Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill statues wrapped in an African-style fabric has been branded hypocritical.
The show, at the Serpentine’s south gallery in Hyde Park, London, will show the former queen and prime minister alongside five other fibreglass statues, hand-painted by Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare with a Dutch wax pattern.
The full-body pattern is said to symbolise “the tangled relationship between Africa and Europe”, according to the exhibition’s description, and is inspired by designs sold to British colonies in West Africa, where it was later referred to as “African print”.
However, the piece, which is titled Suspended States, has come under fire for hypocrisy and playing into “tired” artistic trends.
A Free Speech Union spokesman suggested that if the historical figures wore the patterns today, they would be accused of cultural appropriation.
“You can’t win with the woke,” the spokesman added.
Prof Doug Stokes of the University of Exeter said: “This exhibition follows a now familiar and pedestrian decolonial critique of an evil West vs the sanctified rest. In doing so, it erases the complex ways in which non-western states and civilisations have their own history, including their own slaving past.
“Far more daring perhaps would be an exhibition on Nigeria’s Sokoto caliphate, or the brutal Dahomey Kingdom – both some of the largest slave societies in human history and whose trade was ended through British intervention.
“These artistic trends are increasingly tired and undermine the rich and diverse history of both Africa and Europe.”
Victoria and Churchill stand between Charles James Napier, Earl Roberts, Lord Kitchener, Robert Clive and Henry Bartle Frere, all of whom have ties to the British empire.
General Napier was appointed governor of Sindh, a province of southeastern Pakistan, while Robert Clive became the first British governor of Bengal when India was under British rule.
Earl Roberts and Lord Kitchener are figures both synonymous with British military power, both having served in the Boer Wars.
The Serpentine and Mr Shonibare have been contacted for comment.
‘This exhibition follows a familiar decolonial critique of an evil West vs the sanctified rest’