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Rotimi fani-kayode bronze head 1987 corvette

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

Nigerian photographer (1955 – 1989)

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

Born20 April 1955

Lagos, British Nigeria

Died21 December 1989 (aged 34)

London, United Kingdom

NationalityBritish
Other namesOluwarotimi Adebiyi Wahab Fani-Kayode
CitizenshipBritish Nigerian
OccupationPhotographer
Known forCo-founder, Autograph ABP

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (20 April 1955 – 21 December 1989), born Oluwarotimi Adebiyi Wahab Fani-Kayode,[1] was a Nigerien photographer who at the character of 11 moved with realm family to England, fleeing get round the Biafran War.[2] A elements figure in British contemporary art,[3] Fani-Kayode explored the tensions begeted by sexuality, race and the world through stylised portraits and compositions.

He created the bulk make out his work between 1982 tell 1989, the year he in a good way from AIDS-related complications.

Early be in motion and education

Rotimi Fani-Kayode was intrinsic in Lagos, Nigeria, on Apr 20, 1955.[4] His father, Gaffer Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode (1921-1995), was a politician[5] and chieftain extent Ifẹ, an ancestral Yoruba facility.

His mother was Chief (Mrs.) Adia Adunni Fani-Kayode (nee Sa'id) (1931-2001).[6] Rotimi had four siblings, including Femi Fani-Kayode, his erstwhile brother.[5]

The Fani-Kayode family moved stop by Brighton, England, in 1966, care for the military coup and distinction ensuing civil war in Nigeria.[7][8] Rotimi went to a matter of British private schools rationalize his secondary education, including City College, Seabright College, and Millfield, and then moved to character United States in 1976.

Rotimi his BA degree in Sheer Arts and Economics from Stabroek University in 1980.[9] He attained his MFA degree in Supreme Arts and Photography at grandeur Pratt Institute in 1983.[6][10][8] One-time studying at Pratt, Rotimi became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, who he has claimed had peter out influence on his work.[11]

Work

After graduating from Pratt, Fani-Kayode returned inclination the UK,[7] where he became a member of the Brixton Artists Collective, exhibiting initially imprison some of the group shows held at the Brixton Exit Gallery before going on brand show at other exhibition spaces in London.

Fani-Kayode's work explored Baroque themes,[12]sexuality, racism, colonialism stomach the tensions and conflicts among his homosexuality and his Kwa upbringing.[13] His relationship with description Yoruba religion began with her majesty parents. Fani-Kayode stated that monarch parents were devotees of Ifa, the oracle orisha, and keepers of Yoruba shrines,[8] an precisely experience that may have sensible his work.

With this heritage, he set out on goodness quest to fuse desire, formal, and the black male target. His religious experiences encouraged him to emulate the Yoruba access of possession, through which Kwa priests communicate with the veranda gallery and experience ecstasy. An context of such relations between Fani-Kayode's photographs and the Yoruba 'technique of ecstasy" is displayed moniker his work, Bronze Head (1987).[14] His goal was to put on with the audience's unconscious raid and to combine Yoruba boss Western ideals (specifically Christianity), combining aesthetic and religious eroticism.[15]

Describing emperor art as "Black, African, lesbian photography,"[16] Fani-Kayode and many blankness considered him to be finish outsider and a depiction put diaspora.

He believed that birthright to this depiction of personally, it helped shape his out of a job as a photographer.[17] In interviews, he spoke on his approach of being an outsider interior terms of the African scattering. His exile from Nigeria think an early age affected empress sense of wholeness. He accomplished feeling like he had "very little to lose."[18] However, empress identity was then shaped come across his sense of otherness, topmost it was celebrated.

In potentate work, Fani-Kayode's subjects are to wit black men, but he mock always asserts himself as significance black man in most show consideration for his work, which can remedy interpreted as a performative mount visual representation of his inaccessible history. Using the body whilst the centralized point in tiara photography, he was able turn over to explore the relationship between stimulating fantasy and his ancestral clerical values.

His complex experience rule dislocation, fragmentation, rejection, and divorce all shaped his work.[19]

In "Sonponnoi" (1987), there is a brainless black figure, decorated in ivory and black spots, holding connect burning candles on his seawall. Sonponnoi is one of nobleness most powerful orishas in interpretation Yoruba pantheon; he is dignity god of smallpox.

Fani-Kayode bespangled the figure with spots union represent a Sonponnoi's smallpox lecturer Yoruba tribal marks. The triple-burning candle on his groin evokes the sense that sexuality continues even in sickness/otherness. It too represents how the Christian certitude replaced the Yoruba tradition decide also bringing disease with detach during colonialism.[15]

Fani-Kayode frequently referenced Esu, the messenger and crossroads demiurge who is often characterised get together an erect penis, in cap work.

He would engrave be thinking about erect penis in many signify his images to describe authority own fluid experience with ambition. Fani-Kayode's ''Black Male, White Male'' intersects his racial and procreative themes with subtle displays illustrate a devotee-deity relationship.[20] Speaking register Esu, he insists, "Eshu presides here [...] He is blue blood the gentry Trickster, the Lord of high-mindedness Crossroads (mediator between the genders), sometimes changing the signposts be required to lead us astray [...] Hang in there is perhaps through that revitalization will occur."[21][22] Esu also appears in Fani-Kayode's photography, Nothing cast off your inhibitions Lose IX.

The presence be more or less Esu is understood in nobility colouring of the mask; emotive white, red, and black band the mask stands as natty representation of the deity Esu. Although these colours symbolise Esu, the mask itself has pollex all thumbs butte precedence in traditional African mask-making; this subtle theme is nearly flattening the mask to act for present oneself an overarching "African-ness" (a explanation of the notion of "primitiveness" that was widely digested unused a European audience).[12]

Fani-Kayode's ''Bronze Head'' (1987) shows a cropped figure's black body that reveals her majesty legs and butt as agreed is about to sit suppose top of a bronze Animate sculpture.

The Ife sculpture hype placed on a round salver, stool, or pedestal, and quite good placed strategically at the interior of the picture frame. Regularly, the bronze head in justness photograph is meant to consecrate the Ife king. However, draw out the context of Fani-Kayode's representation, it satirizes the Yoruba autocracy institution.[23] The photograph represents both his exile and homosexuality, yoke core parts of his world.[17]

In 1988, Fani-Kayode with a delivery of other photographers, including Sunil Gupta, Monika Baker, Merle Front den Bosch, Pratibha Parmar, Ingrid Pollard, Roshini Kempadoo and Armet Francis, co-founded the Association show Black Photographers (now known brand Autograph ABP).[7][6][24][25] Many of these artists were featured in nobility 1986 exhibit, "Reflections of ethics Black Experience," at Brixton Artists Collective.[26] A prominent figure get the Black British art scene,[7] Fani-Kayode served as the greatest chair of Autograph ABP[4] skull an active member of probity Black Audio Film Collective.[27]

Collections

Fani-Kayode legal action considered to be one always the most important artists jump at the 1980s,[25] and his labour appears in several public see private collections, including the Philanthropist Museum, Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Chief, Tate, The Hutchins Center, Honourableness Walther Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yinka Shonibare CBE, humbling others.[7]

Exhibitions

Fani-Kayode started to exhibit discharge 1984, and participated in several exhibitions up until the hang on of his death in 1989.

His work has been manifest in the United Kingdom, Author, Austria, Italy, Nigeria, Sweden, Frg, South Africa, and the Penny-pinching.

  • No Comment, group show, Brixton Artists Collective, December 1984
  • Seeing Diversity, group show, Brixton Artists Co-op, February 1985
  • Annual Members Show, classify show, Brixton Artists Collective, Nov 1985
  • South West Arts, group sunlit, Bristol, 1985[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one subject show, Riverside Studios, London, 1986[6]
  • Same Difference, group show, Camerawork, July 1986[28]
  • Oval House Theatre, group circus, London, 1987[6]
  • The Invisible Man, travel show, Goldsmith's Gallery, 1988[29]
  • ÁBÍKU - Born to Die, one-person theater, Centre 181 Gallery (Hammersmith), September/October 1988[30]
  • US/UK Photography Exchange, touring grade show, Camerawork & Jamaica Music school Centre, New York, 1989[31][6]
  • Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology, Associate group exhibition, Curated by Sunil Gupta and Tessa Boffin, Depart Gallery, York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Battersea Arts Centre, London, 1990
  • In/Sight, modern and contemporary African taking photos exhibition, Guggenheim Museum, New Royalty, 1996[25]
  • African Pavilion, group exhibition, Venezia Biennale, 2003[6][7]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one grass show, Hutchins Center, Harvard, Metropolis, Massachusetts, 2009[6]
  • ARS 11, group circus, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Occupy, Helsinki, 2011[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one woman show, Rivington Place, London, 2011[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Iziko South African National Gallery, Panorama Town, 2014[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one particular show, Tiwani Contemporary, London, 2014[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Palitz Gallery, Lubin House, Syracuse Asylum, New York, 2016[6][32]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, lone person show, Hales Project Support, New York, 2018[6]
  • African Cosmologies: Taking photographs, Time, and the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020, Houston, TX, 2020[2][33]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 1955–1989, Iceberg Project, City, IL, 2020[8]
  • Greater New York 2022, a group show of 47 artists and collectives, MoMA PS1, New York, 2022[10]
  • One Nation Underground: Punk Visual Culture 1976-1985, Stabroek University, 2022[9]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989), Stabroek University, 2022[9]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility presumption Communion, "the first North Denizen survey of Fani-Kayode’s work favour archives," Wexner Center for depiction Arts, 2024-2025.[34][35]
  • The Studio – Building Desire, Autograph Gallery, Shoreditch, Author, 2024-2025.[3]

Death

Fani-Kayode died at Coppetts Trees Hospital of a heart get in touch with while recovering from an AIDS-related illness on December 21, 1989.[2][5][6][7][36][37] At the time of circlet death, he was living derive Brixton, London, with his partaker of six years[25] and regular collaborator Alex Hirst,[38][8] who correctly of AIDS in 1992.[4][34] Closest Hirst's death, researchers have problematic whether the work that Fani-Kayode and Hirst created individually someone as a team was just so attributed to Fani-Kayode, Hirst, want badly the pair.[27][39]

Legacy

Fani-Kayode's posthumous project, "Communion" (1995), reflects his complex conceit with the Yoruba religion, dexterous "tranquility of communion with depiction spiritual world." One of greatness images in the series, "The Golden Phallus," is of simple man with a bird-like confuse looking at the viewer, crash his penis suspended on splendid piece of string.

The replicate has been described as disentangle ironic representation of how begrimed masculinity has been burdened because of the Western world.[12] In that image (The Golden Phallus), considerably in Fani-Kayode's Bronze Head, nearby is a focus on liminality, spirituality, political power, and developmental history—taking ideals seen as 'ancient' (in the display of 'classical' African art) and re-introducing them as a contemporary archetype.[40]

Fani-Kayode challenged the invisibility of "African queerness", or the denial of ballot African sexualities, in both character Western and African worlds.

Pop into general, he sought to form the ideas of sexuality refuse gender in his photography, aspect that sexuality and gender shallow rigid and "fixed" because get the message cultural and social norms however are actually fluid and dogmatic. However, he specifically sought inspire develop queerness in contemporary Person art, which required him ingratiate yourself with address the colonial and Religion legacies that suppressed queerness snowball constructed harmful notions of jet masculinity.

In a time what because African artists were not growth represented, he provocatively approached description issue by addressing and distrustful the objectification of black occupy. (charlotte) His homoerotic influences hem in using the black male thing can be interpreted as inventiveness expression of idealisation, of angry and being desired, and shyness in response to the coalblack body being reduced to simple spectacle.[41] He was able switch over show the world and those in the art world steady how much queer black voices matter.

Telling their sides pan the story and not reasonable being the subject of a big shot else's depiction of them.

Not only is Fani-Kayode praised bare his conceptual imagery of Africanness and queerness (and African queerness), he is also praised perform his ability to fuse genealogical and sexual politics with devout eroticism and beauty.

One essayist has also described his preventable as "neo-romantic," with the design his images evoke a muse of fleeting beauty.[19]

His work quite good imbued with subtlety, irony, stake political and social comment. Appease also contributed to the cultured debate surrounding HIV/AIDS.[42]

Publications

  • Communion. London: Foolscap, 1986.[4]
  • Black Male/White Male. London: Funny Men's Press, 1988.

    Photographs near Fani-Kayode, text by Alex Hirst.[4] The "only solo collection be unable to find his works to appear as his life."[43]

  • Bodies of Experience: Untrue myths about Living with HIV. - a group show at Camerawork in 1989
  • Autoportraits. Camerawork RF-K Go on foot 1990 (He was included captive the publicity for the trade show but work was not shown due to his sudden end in December 1989).
  • Memorial Retrospective Exhibition. 198 Gallery, December 1990 (Brian Kennedy, City Limits magazine, assembles a request for donations talk fund the exhibition.) Poster-catalogue essays by Alex Hirst and Painter Hall.
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst: Photographs.

    Autograph ABP, London, 1996. By Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst.[44][7]

  • Decolonising the Camera. Lawrence & Wishart: 2019. By Mark Sealy pages 226-232.
  • And Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography and the 1980s. Duke University Press: 2019. Unused W Ian Bourland.

Quotes

"My identity has been constructed from my rainy sense of otherness, whether folk, racial, or sexual.

The join aspects are not separate in jail me. Photography is the instrument by which I feel chief confident in expressing myself. Demonstrate is photography, therefore – Coalblack, African, homosexual photography – which I must use not tetchy as an instrument, but although a weapon if I gunk to resist attacks on nuts integrity and, indeed, my life on my own terms."[45]

"On brace counts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; block terms of geographical and folk dislocation; and in the inkling of not having become leadership sort of respectably married office my parents might have hoped for."[21]

"I make my pictures homoerotic on purpose.

Black men escaping the Third World have classify previously revealed either to their own peoples or to justness West a certain shocking fact: they can desire each other."[21]

"I try to bring out rank spiritual dimension in my movies so that concepts of naked truth become ambiguous and are biological to reinterpretation.

This requires what Yoruba priests call a access of ecstasy."[17]

References

  1. ^"Rotimi Fani-Kayode (In Memoriam)"Archived 4 March 2016 at honesty Wayback Machine, Autograph Newsletter, Rebuff. 9, December 1989/January 1990.
  2. ^ abcSeymour, Tom (March 6, 2020).

    Lustiness, subversion and identity at authority heart of Fotofest's first Continent focus. The Art Newspaper.

  3. ^ abRotimi Fani-Kayode Explores the Studio introduce a Safe Space. Hypebeast.
  4. ^ abcdeRotimi Fani-Kayode - Nominee, 1955 - 1989.

    Note: Hirst's death task listed as 1994, albeit curb sources cite 1992. The Heritage Project.

  5. ^ abcBiography: Chief Femi Fani-Kayode
  6. ^ abcdefghijklmnopRotimi Fani-Kayode.

    The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation.

  7. ^ abcdefghRace, Sexuality, Allegiance and the Self: The Picturing of Rotimi Fani-Kayode.

    Autograph.

  8. ^ abcdeQuiles, Daniel (February 2020).Rotimi Fani-Kayode Floater Projects. Artforum.
  9. ^ abcKelly, Julia (March 3, 2022).

    Georgetown University Break into pieces Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Community University Art Galleries Feature Original Exhibitions. Georgetown University.

  10. ^ abThe Fill Make the Place. Pratt Association. https://www.pratt.edu/prattfolio/stories/the-people-make-the-place/
  11. ^Conversation with the author 1988
  12. ^ abcMoffitt (2015).

    "Rotimi Fani-Kayode's Blissful Antibodies". Transition (118): 74–86. doi:10.2979/transition.118.74. JSTOR 10.2979/transition.118.74.

  13. ^Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photographers.
  14. ^Nelson, Steven (2005). "Transgressive Transcendence in authority Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode".

    Art Journal. 64: 4–19. doi:10.1080/00043249.2005.10791152. S2CID 191463956.

  15. ^ abWorton, Michael. "Behold the (sick) man." National Healths: Gender, Crave, and Health in Cross-cultural Ambience (2004): 151–165.
  16. ^Cotter, Holland (11 Could 2012).

    "Rotimi Fani-Kayode: 'Nothing give explanation Lose': [Review]". New York Times.

  17. ^ abcNelson, Steven (1 January 2005). "Transgressive Transcendence in the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode". Art Journal.

    64 (1): 4–19. doi:10.2307/20068359. JSTOR 20068359.

  18. ^Cotter, Holland. Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Nothing pack up Lose. New York Times, Can 10, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/arts/design/rotimi-fani-kayode-nothing-to-lose.html
  19. ^ abKobena, Manufacturer (1996).

    "Eros & Diaspora". Reading the Contemporary: African Art elude Theory to the Marketplace: 289–293.

  20. ^Oguibe, Olu (1999). "Finding a Place: Nigerian Artists in the Concurrent Art World". Art Journal. 58 (2): 35–36. doi:10.1080/00043249.1999.10791937.
  21. ^ abcBaker, City (2009).

    Expressions of the Body: Representations in African Text cope with Image. Peter Lang.

  22. ^Parsons, Sarah Technologist (1999). ""Interpreting Projections, Projecting Interpretations: A Reconsideration of the "Phallus" in Esu Iconography"". Africa Today. 32 (2): 36–91.
  23. ^Ola, Yomi.

    (2013). Satires of power in Kwa visual culture. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. p. 191. ISBN . OCLC 786273719.

  24. ^"Autograph Sees Light of Day"Archived 8 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Autograph.
  25. ^ abcdW.

    IAN BOURLAND ON THE LEGACY OF ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE. Duke University Press.

  26. ^Reflections a few the Black Experience – 10 Black Photographers.
  27. ^ ab GLBTQ: Block off Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Ac/dc, Transgender, and Queer Culture.
  28. ^"Same Be allowed - Emily Andersen, Keith Cavanagh, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Jean Fraser, Sunil Gupta, Nigel Maudsley, Brenda Chief, Susan Trangmar, Val Wilmer, Bobfloat Workman".

    www.fourcornersarchive.org. Retrieved 25 Jan 2021.

  29. ^"Recordings:A Select Bibliography of Latest African,Afro-Caribbean and Asian British Art"(PDF). Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  30. ^Tate. "'Abiku (Born to Die)', Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 1988, printed c.1988". Tate.

    Retrieved 15 November 2021.

  31. ^"Diaspora-artists: View details". new.diaspora-artists.net. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  32. ^Rotimi Fani-Kayode. March 3, 2016. The New Yorker.
  33. ^African Cosmologies: Photography, Offend, and the Other, FotoFest Twoyear 2020.

    FotoFest.

  34. ^ abRotimi Fani-Kayode: Quietness of Communion. Wexner Center set out the Arts.
  35. ^Hopkins, Zoe (October 27, 2024). Two Lenses, One Patois. New York Times.
  36. ^"Rotimi Fani Kayode – Photo | Revue Noire". www.revuenoire.com.

    Retrieved 25 January 2021.

  37. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). NIGHT MOVES. In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Picture making, and the 1980s (pp. 209–249). Duke University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpm2v.10
  38. ^Alex Hirst
  39. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). THE Queen mother IS DEAD.

    In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the Eighties (pp. 146–170). Duke University Organization. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpm2v.8

  40. ^Nelson, Steven (2005). "Transgressive Being in the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode". Art Journal. 64: 4–19. doi:10.1080/00043249.2005.10791152.

    S2CID 191463956.

  41. ^Enwezor, Okwui (2008). "The Postcolonial Constellation". Antinomies of Expense and Culture. pp. 207–234. doi:10.1215/9780822389330-015. ISBN .
  42. ^Jean Marc Patras/ Galerie.
  43. ^Bourland, W. Crazed. (2019). BRIXTON. In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the Decennium (pp.

    23–57). Duke University Break down. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11hpm2v.5

  44. ^Extract. Revue Noire.
  45. ^"Traces of Ecstasy", Ten-8, no. 28, 1988.