Notes

Yinka Shonibare’s theatrical photographic series Diary of a Victorian Dandy appears to be moments in the day of his character played by the artist himself. Shonibare’s dandy has achieved an upper-class status with a lavish lifestyle, affording him the ability to rise in the late morning (as indicated in the title) to his adoring servants. The focused attention on the dandy by the seemingly inferior white servants is a subversion of stereotypes and the notion of race and social class restrictions set in the Victorian Era. The placement of an elegant fictional black dandy in the highest and most elite Victorian society, which would have been otherwise off-limits to him, challenges the viewer to be free from the physiological or inherited conditioning of racial and class stereotypes. The Diary of a Victorian Dandy series is not an attempt to rewrite history, but rather a reinvention that investigates the construction of identity and addresses the viewer to look without the limitations of a certain class, ethnicity or group, but to look without any judgement, prejudice or conclusions.