As cultural theorist Homi Bhabha reminds us in his 1994 book The Location of Culture, hybridity is as much about resistance as it is about negotiation. In Yinka Shonibare’s solo exhibition “Safiotra [Hybridités/Hybridities]” at Fondation H, what is being resisted is clear: oppressive singular narratives and colonial thinking. But I find myself grappling with what, if anything, is being negotiated. This sense of uncertainty and ambiguity may well be the point—that a negotiation of the hybrid is too elusive to pin down.
The survey, spanning nearly two decades of the artist’s interdisciplinary practice, is significant for many reasons. To begin, it is the first time an exhibition of this scale by Shonibare has been shown in Madagascar, an occasion that seems apt since Shonibare’s practice is, at its core, about hybridity—the merging of ideas, materials, and philosophies within the layered histories of postcolonial realities. Madagascar, too, embodies this unstable state of being, including in ways the country has yet to fully confront. The African influence, complicated by French colonization from 1896 to 1960, intersects with Asian cultural and ancestral ties. “Safiotra,” then, offers a much-awaited moment to reflect on boundary-crossing dialogues between the great island and the great continent.
The exhibition features one of Shonibare’s most significant works, The African Library, 2018, on view for the first time to the Malagasy public. This sculptural installation, consisting of six thousand books wrapped in Dutch wax print fabric, takes the form of a library that acknowledges individuals who have played significant roles and contributed greatly to postcolonial Africa, across music, sports, politics, literature, culture, and economics. A digital interface accompanies the installation, offering historical and biographical information in English and, for the first time, in French and Malagasy as well. Also included is Refugee Astronaut X, 2024: a continuation of Shonibare’s “Refugee Astronaut” series (2015–). Created with the Malagasy context in mind, a life-size figure is dressed in Dutch wax print fabric, carrying a sack filled with possessions, ready for survival amid ecological and humanitarian crises.
