case study: Yinka Shonibare CBE
practice-led digital experiences

digital can be part of the experience of an artwork, rather than simply a record of it

Yinka Shonibare’s Library works bring together thousands of books, names and individual histories within large-scale installations. Their digital elements open up the stories contained within the physical collections, giving audiences another way to explore the ideas at the heart of each work.

seachange studio developed the first of for The British Library at shown atTurner Contemporary in 2016 and now in the permanent collection of Tate. The collaboration has since continued across The African Library, The American Library, two iterations of The Great Migration Library and, most recently, The War Library shown at the Serpentine Galleries in 2024.

creating digital work for artists requires more than digital expertise

Each Library has its own subject, context and artistic proposition. Translating these into digital experiences requires an understanding of the work itself: what it is saying, how its different elements relate and how an audience encounters it. More than twenty years of experience in the art world allows seachange founder Hanna Sorrell to work from that understanding, using digital structure, navigation and interaction to support the ideas within the work.

Across the Library projects, this has meant transforming large collections of individual names and histories into experiences that can be explored without losing sight of the work as a whole. The digital response is shaped by the artwork, rather than by a predetermined format.

extending the experience of an artwork beyond the gallery

Within an exhibition, the digital element allows visitors to move from the physical presence of the installation into the individual histories it contains. Beyond the gallery, it opens that experience to people who cannot attend in person and allows the work to remain accessible after an exhibition has closed.

The result is not a digital representation of the artwork, but another way into it: grounded in the same ideas, extending how they can be explored and widening who is able to encounter them.