Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (b. 1962, London, UK) studied Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art and received his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London. Shonibare's interdisciplinary practice uses citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities within the context of globalization. His works comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories, often examining race, class, and the construction of cultural identity. In 2004, he was nominated for the Turner Prize, and in 2008, his mid-career survey began at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, before travelling to other museums worldwide. Shonibare’s public art commission, ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London in 2010, and is now in the permanent collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. In 2013, he was elected a Royal Academician and was awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’ in 2019. His works are held in notable museum collections worldwide, including the Tate Collection, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, and VandenBroek Foundation, The Netherlands, among many others.