Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, author of The Politics of Aesthetics has some strong words about Yinka Shonibare’s art:

“Multimediality” only means that you combine several media. The combination may be implemented in various ways, with various intentions and effects. The combination may be an addition or it may be a fusion. The addition may produce a surplus of sensory power or it can create a lack, a gap or a distance. Multi-mediality has often been used by conceptual artists to explore the relations between words, meanings and visible forms. When Gary Hill used a number of monitors as sculptural elements to explore the relations between a mouth and the words that go through it, this could hardly be considered as “hyper-spectacle”. Yet, in contrast, when Jason Rhoades built his gigantesque installation that was supposed to represent the bellows of the capitalist machine swallowing everything and turning it to shit, he may have had the intention of denouncing the capitalist machine, but what remains on the ground is a kind of theme-park entertainment. The same occurs when Yinka Shonibare creates his Garden of Love (2007) where he turns some well-known French 18th century paintings into “tableaux vivants” and dresses the characters with batik cloth.* He may have had the intention to both denounce the reality of slavery behind the happy amorous scenes of noble life and the false authenticity of African batik, which actually was made in Indonesia, but what remains is a wax-museum scene. More generally I would say that there is no straight connection between multimediality and subversion (or subjugation). A technical dispositif is always at the same time an aesthetic dispositif, and it is at this level that art may take on such and such political meaning, according to such and such a context.

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* Shonibare’s Garden of Love was held at, and created for, the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, April 2–July 8, 2007.