Nelson's Jacket and Fanny's Dress,

2011

Shonibare presents a matrimonial portrait of the British naval commander Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) and his wife, Frances “Fanny” Nisbet Nelson (1758–1831), as a parable of the intertwined legacies of colonialism, slavery, and art collecting. Lord Nelson and Fanny are represented by fashionable garments—the coat of a vice admiral and an empire-waisted gown—crafted from Dutch wax-resist cloth, a material entangled with the Dutch and British quest for control of the land, people, and market of West Africa. By placing these figures in glass vitrines, Shonibare draws attention to the role museums played in the project of colonial expansion, as repositories for objects looted during the Napoleonic Wars. Shonibare, like Jacques-Louis David in The Death of Socrates nearby, represents figures of the past to comment on the present. In Addio del Passato, the character of Fanny Nisbet, played by the opera singer Nadine Benjamine, performs an aria from the last act of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata (1853). On th eve of her death, Verdi’s heroine Violetta offers an allegory for the story of Nelson’s betrayal of his wife and his love affair with Lady Hamilton.