Envision a weightless piece of cloth. But it is not weightless. That vision is Wind Sculpture in Bronze I. It stands here in the Princess Estelle Sculpture Garden.
This monumental sculpture embodies contradiction. It freezes a moment in time. It sculpts the impossible: the motion of the wind.
Yinka Shonibare CBE created Wind Sculpture in Bronze I in 2022. Princess Estelle’s cultural foundation presented it to Royal Djurgården. This is the third permanent sculpture given to the garden.
The sculpture captures the shifting wind. It passes through Shonibare’s signature Dutch wax batik fabric. The sculpture is two meters tall. It is rendered in steel and fiberglass.
Shonibare challenges our assumptions. He interrogates traditional ideas about identity. He sees identity as a construct rather than a truth.
The artist says the fabric was made in Holland. Indonesian batik served as a model. Britain sold the fabric in West African colonies. It became very popular there. People saw it as authentically African. Shonibare calls it a perfect starting point. It sparks conversations about multifaceted identities. It highlights global interdependencies.
Shonibare worked in Stockholm in 2004. He created a giant ship in a bottle for Moderna Museet. It was based on the Vasa. In 2010, he replicated another ship. It was Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle. It was displayed in Trafalgar Square. Both works replaced white sails. They used Dutch wax batik cloths. These cloths inspired the new sculpture.
Shonibare said bronze is a Eurocentric material. Bronze sculpture often depicts heroic male figures. He wanted to challenge that. He asked if bronze could move away from patriarchal imagery. Could it be something more exciting? That question interested him about the material. So, the Wind Sculpture in Bronze I is his first bronze wind sculpture. He is turning tradition on its head.