Double Dutch Shonibare trained as a painter in London in the mid-1980s to early 1990s. His subsequent paintings comprise neat rows of small square canvases wrapped in Dutch wax (or "African print") fabric instead of linen. They are overlaid with pigment and then arranged in a grid on a monochromatic background square or rectangle. Double Dutch refers to the minimalist movement's use of repetition and the grid. At the same time, it breaks down the grandness of scale and gesture associated with that movement's (largely white male) practitioners. As Shonibare says, "There is no need for me to make one big heroic painting. I can actually take the language of [a] big abstract painting and produce it in very small pieces, in fragments. I can actually break it down and reconstruct it." Double Dutch is characterized by its vibrant palette and clever title pun--a literal play on the geographic origins of the fabric that is used in place of canvas and on the colloquial term "double Dutch," which denotes slippages in translation from one language to another. With its hot pink background, Double Dutch works against the strident masculinity and somber coloration of much American minimalism. Other references can be drawn in relation to the work's structure: to the warp and weft of traditional Asante cotton textiles and their contrasting dark and light colored squares, for example.