FARNESE HERCULES 2017

Editor: So, this is Yinka Shonibare's "Farnese Hercules" from 2017, a mixed-media sculpture. It’s… striking! A classical form, but then covered in vibrant, almost aggressively patterned fabric, and a globe where his head should be. I’m immediately thinking about clashing cultures. What's your take? Curator: Oh, "clashing" is one word for it, isn’t it? It’s more like a vibrant collision, I'd say. Shonibare takes this symbol of Western power, the Farnese Hercules, and explodes it with colour and… dare I say it, kitsch. These wax-print fabrics, though often associated with Africa, were actually inspired by Indonesian batiks and mass-produced by the Dutch! A glorious global game of telephone, no? Editor: A game of telephone… I like that! So it's about trade, colonialism… repurposing those narratives? Curator: Precisely! That headless figure with the globe—whose world is it, really? And Hercules himself…strength, power, but he's burdened, isn't he? Weighted down with those vibrant layers, almost suffocated by them. Almost comical in a strange way. Editor: So, he’s challenging the grand narratives, the 'heroic' tales? Turning them on their head, quite literally! I wonder if he is suggesting history is a story someone else tells about you, or you tell about yourself? Curator: Beautifully put. The colours aren't just decoration; they are a deliberate intervention, demanding we re-evaluate the stories we’ve been told. Perhaps asking, ‘Who gets to be Hercules?' A post-colonial critique of power rendered in, of all things, textiles. Brilliant, isn't it? What will stick with you from this encounter, I wonder? Editor: That collision, that “glorious global game of telephone”. The idea that nothing is quite as it seems, especially when it comes to history and power. Curator: Absolutely! A Hercules for our times – flawed, complicated, and utterly fabulous. I think, Shonibare makes one stop and truly see our present as a constant act of rewriting history, right now, even us here today in this room!