WILLY LOMAN. THE RISE AND FALL (AVARICIOUS AND PRODIGAL) 2009

Editor: Here we have Yinka Shonibare’s "WILLY LOMAN. THE RISE AND FALL (AVARICIOUS AND PRODIGAL)" from 2009, a mixed-media installation piece including photography. The figures draped over bags give me this sense of… exhausted opulence, maybe? How would you interpret this work? Curator: From a materialist perspective, I see an investigation of labor, bodies, and commodities. The jute sacks – themselves symbols of global trade and material exchange - act as a support system, or perhaps a burden, for these bodies. Shonibare is interested in global supply chains and unequal exchange. Note how these nude figures push, pull, and seemingly exhaust themselves supporting one another and a dressed, paternalistic, figure who presides over them. Editor: So, the bodies and sacks… they're all materials being acted upon? Even the figures themselves become commodities in this reading? Curator: Exactly. Think about the historical context of Shonibare's work: his exploration of colonialism and its impact on global economies and identities. What does the backdrop, what looks like a warehouse, contribute to the reading of this work? Editor: It emphasizes this sense of industry, right? As though the human figures and materials are just another aspect of production or storage within a global system. Do the bodies and skin tones reflect some tension of class and material means? Curator: Precisely. Shonibare is prompting us to consider who benefits and who is exploited within these systems of material exchange and how those structures are gendered and raced. It is meant to spark that discourse and force the viewer to question such power structures in art and commerce. Editor: I never thought about the sacks themselves being loaded with all this symbolism! That’s powerful. Thank you for illuminating this artist’s investigation into how structures, especially material-based ones, dominate modern global discourse! Curator: Indeed. It’s in those material details that we find deeper meaning, right? It invites conversation about consumption and its cost to the body and the environment.