As with the artist’s series of public, outdoor "Wind Sculptures," Yinka Shonibare's "Material" sculptures continue to explore and play with the notion of harnessing motion and freezing it in a moment of time. Sized on a domestic rather than monumental scale, the “Material” series is made in bronze, which is then hand-painted to look like a batik fabric blowing in the wind. Through this series, the artist pushes the formal boundaries of both batik fabric and bronze by creating objects that appear flexible and delicate but are in fact solid and immutable. Shonibare says of his works dealing with motion, "I am trying to do the opposite of sculpture—to sculpt the impossible. I am interested in making the movement of the wind visible through a sculptural form. Most of us move around the world, if you fly, there is wind involved, and if you come by boat, there is wind involved,” Shonibare continues, “These sculptures are a metaphor for the natural movement of people. Migration."


Material is a series of 9 sculptures, all with a unique color/pattern and all created with the same form.