BACK TO CONTEMPORARY ART

YINKA SHONIBARE
(English, born 1962)

Three Graces, 2001
Dutch Wax printed cotton textile, three life-size fiberglass mannequins, three aluminum bases
Purchased with funds from the Alice Speed Stoll Accessions Trust 2002.6, a-c

Three Graces is based upon a photograph the artist found in the archives of the Hendrik Christian Andersen Museum in Rome, Italy. Henrik Christian Anderson, a prominent sculptor, took the photograph which shows his mother, Helene, his sister-in-law, Olivia, and his model, Lucia. These three women are described as if they were sisters because although they came from different backgrounds, they found a unifying force in the sculptor’s studio. Models of Victorian virtue, charity, and even gratitude, they are the perfect foil for Shonibare’s play with history and identity.

The three original graces are figures from Greek mythology who represent Charities (called in Latin Graces) for beauty, grace and artistic inspiration, and perhaps also, in their earliest form, of powers of vegetation. They are generally said to be tree sisters called Euphrosyne, Thalia, and Aglaea. Their father was Zeus.

The Three Graces mixes the classical Greek ideas with history, fashion, and commerce. The artist leaves us guessing about what the piece means. The figures do not have heads and they sport a skin color that defies exact definition. Are these the shop mannequins that critically question the meaning of fashion? Or are they symbols of a bygone world that never was as real as we imagine? The artist said, “The mind should be allowed to travel and have fantasy and imagination. People’s minds need to wander.”