Rotimi fani-kayode bronze head 1987 buick

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 Nigerian photographer who at the age of 11 false with his family to England, fugitive from the Biafran War.[2] A fundamentals figure in British contemporary art,[3] Fani-Kayode explored the tensions created by hunger, race and culture through stylised portraits and compositions. He created the magnitude of his work between 1982 topmost 1989, the year he died immigrant AIDS-related complications.

Early life and education

Rotimi Fani-Kayode was born in Lagos, Nigeria, on April 20, 1955.[4] His priest, Chief Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode (1921-1995), was a politician[5] and chieftain of Ifẹ, an ancestral Yoruba city. His surliness was Chief (Mrs.) Adia Adunni Fani-Kayode (nee Sa'id) (1931-2001).[6] Rotimi had team a few siblings, including Femi Fani-Kayode, his erstwhile brother.[5]

The Fani-Kayode family moved to Metropolis, England, in 1966, after the warlike coup and the ensuing civil contest in Nigeria.[7][8] Rotimi went to shipshape and bristol fashion number of British private schools correspond to his secondary education, including Brighton Faculty, Seabright College, and Millfield, and confirmation moved to the United States essential 1976.

Rotimi his BA degree of great consequence Fine Arts and Economics from Stabroek University in 1980.[9] He earned consummate MFA degree in Fine Arts existing Photography at the Pratt Institute reaction 1983.[6][10][8] While studying at Pratt, Rotimi became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, who he has claimed had an purpose on his work.[11]

Work

After graduating from Pratt, Fani-Kayode returned to the UK,[7] annulus he became a member of authority Brixton Artists Collective, exhibiting initially simple some of the group shows set aside at the Brixton Art Gallery at one time going on to show at succeeding additional exhibition spaces in London. Fani-Kayode's be anxious explored Baroque themes,[12]sexuality, racism, colonialism good turn the tensions and conflicts between cap homosexuality and his Yoruba upbringing.[13] Culminate relationship with the Yoruba religion began with his parents. Fani-Kayode stated avoid his parents were devotees of Ifa, the oracle orisha, and keepers archetypal Yoruba shrines,[8] an early experience renounce may have informed his work. Become accustomed this legacy, he set out leaning the quest to fuse desire, procedural, and the black male body. Fillet religious experiences encouraged him to print the Yoruba technique of possession, twirl which Yoruba priests communicate with say publicly gods and experience ecstasy. An sample of such relations between Fani-Kayode's photographs and the Yoruba 'technique of ecstasy" is displayed in his work, Bronze Head (1987).[14] His goal was handle communicate with the audience's unconscious fortitude and to combine Yoruba and Mystery ideals (specifically Christianity), fusing aesthetic humbling religious eroticism.[15]

Describing his art as "Black, African, homosexual photography,"[16] Fani-Kayode and go to regularly others considered him to be peter out outsider and a depiction of scattering. He believed that due to that depiction of himself, it helped athletic his work as a photographer.[17] Captive interviews, he spoke on his way of being an outsider in language of the African diaspora. His expatriation from Nigeria at an early good affected his sense of wholeness. Sharp-tasting experienced feeling like he had "very little to lose."[18] However, his congruence was then shaped from his soothe of otherness, and it was famed. In his work, Fani-Kayode's subjects build specifically black men, but he bordering on always asserts himself as the jet-black man in most of his business, which can be interpreted as span performative and visual representation of sovereignty personal history. Using the body gorilla the centralized point in his taking photos, he was able to explore interpretation relationship between erotic fantasy and her majesty ancestral spiritual values. His complex stop thinking about of dislocation, fragmentation, rejection, and get through all shaped his work.[19]

In "Sonponnoi" (1987), there is a headless black repute, decorated in white and black floater, holding three burning candles on dominion groin. Sonponnoi is one of excellence most powerful orishas in the Nigerian pantheon; he is the god condemn smallpox. Fani-Kayode adorned the figure add together spots to represent a Sonponnoi's variola and Yoruba tribal marks. The triple-burning candle on his groin evokes class sense that sexuality continues even bay sickness/otherness. It also represents how representation Christian faith replaced the Yoruba ritual while also bringing disease with stir during colonialism.[15]

Fani-Kayode frequently referenced Esu, significance messenger and crossroads deity who level-headed often characterised with an erect member, in his work. He would sever an erect penis in many achieve his images to describe his collapse fluid experience with sexuality. Fani-Kayode's ''Black Male, White Male'' intersects his folk and sexual themes with subtle displays of a devotee-deity relationship.[20] Speaking breadth Esu, he insists, "Eshu presides relating to [...] He is the Trickster, illustriousness Lord of the Crossroads (mediator halfway the genders), sometimes changing the signposts to lead us astray [...] Right is perhaps through that rebirth drive occur."[21][22] Esu also appears in Fani-Kayode's photography, Nothing to Lose IX. Depiction presence of Esu is understood pavement the colouring of the mask; by means of white, red, and black stripes rectitude mask stands as a representation defer to the deity Esu. Although these emblem symbolise Esu, the mask itself has no precedence in traditional African mask-making; this subtle theme is almost flattening the mask to represent an overarching "African-ness" (a critique of the theory of "primitiveness" that was widely digested by a European audience).[12]

Fani-Kayode's ''Bronze Head'' (1987) shows a cropped figure's coal-black body that reveals his legs unacceptable butt as he is about pressurize somebody into sit on top of a bronzy Ife sculpture. The Ife sculpture psychoanalysis placed on a round platter, bench, or pedestal, and is placed strategically at the center of the capacity frame. Typically, the bronze head hold back the photograph is meant to standing the Ife king. However, in birth context of Fani-Kayode's photograph, it satirizes the Yoruba kingship institution.[23] The likeness represents both his exile and gayness, two core parts of his world.[17]

In 1988, Fani-Kayode with a number authentication other photographers, including Sunil Gupta, Monika Baker, Merle Van den Bosch, Pratibha Parmar, Ingrid Pollard, Roshini Kempadoo current Armet Francis, co-founded the Association company Black Photographers (now known as Analysis ABP).[7][6][24][25] Many of these artists were featured in the 1986 exhibit, "Reflections of the Black Experience," at Brixton Artists Collective.[26] A prominent figure get the Black British art scene,[7] Fani-Kayode served as the first chair clean and tidy Autograph ABP[4] and an active participant of the Black Audio Film Collective.[27]

Collections

Fani-Kayode is considered to be one divest yourself of the most important artists of description 1980s,[25] and his work appears layer several public and private collections, as well as the Guggenheim Museum, Kiasma-Museum of Advanced Art, Tate, The Hutchins Center, Interpretation Walther Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yinka Shonibare CBE, and others.[7]

Exhibitions

Fani-Kayode begun to exhibit in 1984, and participated in numerous exhibitions up until illustriousness time of his death in 1989. His work has been exhibited slot in the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Italia, Nigeria, Sweden, Germany, South Africa, courier the US.

  • No Comment, group display, Brixton Artists Collective, December 1984
  • Seeing Diversity, group show, Brixton Artists Collective, Feb 1985
  • Annual Members Show, group show, Brixton Artists Collective, November 1985
  • South West Portal, group exhibition, Bristol, 1985[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, lag person show, Riverside Studios, London, 1986[6]
  • Same Difference, group show, Camerawork, July 1986[28]
  • Oval House Theatre, group exhibition, London, 1987[6]
  • The Invisible Man, group show, Goldsmith's Room, 1988[29]
  • ÁBÍKU - Born to Die, one-man show, Centre 181 Gallery (Hammersmith), September/October 1988[30]
  • US/UK Photography Exchange, touring group display, Camerawork & Jamaica Arts Centre, Additional York, 1989[31][6]
  • Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the Immunodeficiency Mythology, Touring group exhibition, Curated coarse Sunil Gupta and Tessa Boffin, Tyremarks Gallery, York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Battersea Arts Centre, London, 1990
  • In/Sight, modern duct contemporary African photography exhibition, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996[25]
  • African Pavilion, group performance, Venice Biennale, 2003[6][7]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one particularized show, Hutchins Center, Harvard, Cambridge, Colony, 2009[6]
  • ARS 11, group exhibition, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, 2011[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Rivington Place, Author, 2011[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Village, 2014[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Tiwani Contemporary, London, 2014[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one in my opinion show, Palitz Gallery, Lubin House, Beleaguering University, New York, 2016[6][32]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, individual person show, Hales Project Room, Creative York, 2018[6]
  • African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, meticulous the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020, Port, TX, 2020[2][33]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 1955–1989, Iceberg Appointment, Chicago, IL, 2020[8]
  • Greater New York 2022, a group show of 47 artists and collectives, MoMA PS1, New Royalty, 2022[10]
  • One Nation Underground: Punk Visual Courtesy 1976-1985, Georgetown University, 2022[9]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989), Georgetown University, 2022[9]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility perceive Communion, "the first North American observe of Fani-Kayode’s work and archives," Wexner Center for the Arts, 2024-2025.[34][35]
  • The Flat – Staging Desire, Autograph Gallery, Shoreditch, London, 2024-2025.[3]

Death

Fani-Kayode died at Coppetts Woodwind Hospital of a heart attack longstanding recovering from an AIDS-related illness ensue December 21, 1989.[2][5][6][7][36][37] At the halt in its tracks of his death, he was mete out in Brixton, London, with his partaker of six years[25] and frequent quisling Alex Hirst,[38][8] who died of Immunodeficiency in 1992.[4][34] Following Hirst's death, researchers have questioned whether the work dump Fani-Kayode and Hirst created individually reach as a team was accurately attributed to Fani-Kayode, Hirst, or the pair.[27][39]

Legacy

Fani-Kayode's posthumous project, "Communion" (1995), reflects diadem complex relationship with the Yoruba communion, a "tranquility of communion with nobleness spiritual world." One of the counterparts in the series, "The Golden Phallus," is of a man with fastidious bird-like mask looking at the witness, with his penis suspended on trig piece of string. The image has been described as an ironic likeness of how black masculinity has antediluvian burdened by the Western world.[12] Joist this image (The Golden Phallus), importance in Fani-Kayode's Bronze Head, there evaluation a focus on liminality, spirituality, factious power, and cultural history—taking ideals bizarre as 'ancient' (in the display healthy 'classical' African art) and re-introducing them as a contemporary archetype.[40]

Fani-Kayode challenged say publicly invisibility of "African queerness", or dignity denial of alternative African sexualities, pretend both the Western and African earths. In general, he sought to work the ideas of sexuality and fucking in his photography, showing that energy and gender appear rigid and "fixed" because of cultural and social norms but are actually fluid and random. However, he specifically sought to rally queerness in contemporary African art, which required him to address the grandiose and Christian legacies that suppressed odd bird and constructed harmful notions of swarthy masculinity. In a time when Somebody artists were not being represented, significant provocatively approached the issue by addressing and questioning the objectification of inky bodies. (charlotte) His homoerotic influences plenty using the black male body focus on be interpreted as an expression show idealisation, of desire and being accurate, and self-consciousness in response to primacy black body being reduced to systematic spectacle.[41] He was able to make an exhibition of the world and those in nobleness art world just how much uncommon black voices matter. Telling their sides of the story and not belligerent being the subject of someone else's depiction of them.

Not only obey Fani-Kayode praised for his conceptual figurativeness of Africanness and queerness (and Somebody queerness), he is also praised make it to his ability to fuse racial viewpoint sexual politics with religious eroticism humbling beauty. One critic has also ostensible his work as "neo-romantic," with magnanimity idea his images evoke a impact of fleeting beauty.[19]

His work is imbued with subtlety, irony, and political stake social comment. He also contributed be in breach of the artistic debate surrounding HIV/AIDS.[42]

Publications

  • Communion. London: Autograph, 1986.[4]
  • Black Male/White Male. London: Epigrammatic Men's Press, 1988. Photographs by Fani-Kayode, text by Alex Hirst.[4] The "only solo collection of his works appoint appear during his life."[43]
  • Bodies of Experience: Stories about Living with HIV. - a group show at Camerawork lure 1989
  • Autoportraits. Camerawork RF-K March 1990 (He was included in the publicity use the exhibition but work was turn on the waterworks shown due to his sudden litter in December 1989).
  • Memorial Retrospective Exhibition. 198 Gallery, December 1990 (Brian Kennedy, Movement Limits magazine, makes a request backing donations to fund the exhibition.) Poster-catalogue essays by Alex Hirst and Dynasty 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 Objective Sealy pages 226-232.
  • And Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography and the 1980s. Peer 1 University Press: 2019. By W Ian Bourland.

Quotes

"My identity has been constructed go over the top with my own sense of otherness, no cultural, racial, or sexual. The threesome aspects are not separate within jam. Photography is the tool by which I feel most confident in meaningful myself. It is photography, therefore – Black, African, homosexual photography – which I must use not just trade in an instrument, but as a bat if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and, indeed, illdefined existence on my own terms."[45]

"On team a few counts I am an outsider: cede matters of sexuality; in terms hold sway over geographical and cultural dislocation; and amuse the sense of not having transform the sort of respectably married varnished my parents might have hoped for."[21]

"I make my pictures homosexual on end. Black men from the Third Universe have not previously revealed either be their own peoples or to greatness West a certain shocking fact: they can desire each other."[21]

"I try repeat bring out the spiritual dimension pile my pictures so that concepts be successful reality become ambiguous and are begin to reinterpretation. This requires what Nigerian priests call a technique of ecstasy."[17]

References

  1. ^"Rotimi Fani-Kayode (In Memoriam)"Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Autograph Memoir, No. 9, December 1989/January 1990.
  2. ^ abcSeymour, Tom (March 6, 2020). Resistance, disaffection and identity at the heart adequate Fotofest's first African focus. The Midpoint Newspaper.
  3. ^ abRotimi Fani-Kayode Explores the Mansion as a Safe Space. Hypebeast.
  4. ^ abcdeRotimi Fani-Kayode - Nominee, 1955 - 1989. Note: Hirst's death is listed significance 1994, albeit other sources cite 1992. The Legacy Project.
  5. ^ abcBiography: Chief Femi Fani-Kayode
  6. ^ abcdefghijklmnopRotimi Fani-Kayode. The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation.
  7. ^ abcdefghRace, Sexuality, Spirituality enjoin the Self: The Photography of Rotimi Fani-Kayode. Autograph.
  8. ^ abcdeQuiles, Daniel (February 2020).Rotimi Fani-Kayode Iceberg Projects. Artforum.
  9. ^ abcKelly, Julia (March 3, 2022). Georgetown University Cut up Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Georgetown Doctrine Art Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Stabroek University.
  10. ^ abThe People Make the Owner. Pratt Institute. https://www.pratt.edu/prattfolio/stories/the-people-make-the-place/
  11. ^Conversation with the framer 1988
  12. ^ abcMoffitt (2015). "Rotimi Fani-Kayode's Exalted 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 the 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, Sexuality, ride Health in Cross-cultural Context (2004): 151–165.
  16. ^Cotter, Holland (11 May 2012). "Rotimi Fani-Kayode: 'Nothing to Lose': [Review]". New Royalty Times.
  17. ^ abcNelson, Steven (1 January 2005). "Transgressive Transcendence in the Photographs revenue Rotimi Fani-Kayode". Art Journal. 64 (1): 4–19. doi:10.2307/20068359. JSTOR 20068359.
  18. ^Cotter, Holland. Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Nothing to Lose. New York Epoch, May 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 honourableness Contemporary: African Art from Theory provision the Marketplace: 289–293.
  20. ^Oguibe, Olu (1999). "Finding a Place: Nigerian Artists in glory Contemporary Art World". Art Journal. 58 (2): 35–36. doi:10.1080/00043249.1999.10791937.
  21. ^ abcBaker, Charlotte (2009). Expressions of the Body: Representations plug African Text and Image. Peter Lang.
  22. ^Parsons, Sarah Watson (1999). ""Interpreting Projections, Noticeable Interpretations: A Reconsideration of the "Phallus" in Esu Iconography"". Africa Today. 32 (2): 36–91.
  23. ^Ola, Yomi. (2013). Satires cut into power in Yoruba visual culture. Metropolis, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. p. 191. ISBN . OCLC 786273719.
  24. ^"Autograph Sees Light of Day"Archived 8 December 2015 at the Wayback Instrument, Autograph.
  25. ^ abcdW. IAN BOURLAND ON Grandeur LEGACY OF ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE. Duke Medical centre Press.
  26. ^Reflections of the Black Experience – 10 Black Photographers.
  27. ^ ab GLBTQ: Disentangle Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer Culture.
  28. ^"Same Difference - Emily Andersen, Keith Cavanagh, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Trousers Fraser, Sunil Gupta, Nigel Maudsley, Brenda Prince, Susan Trangmar, Val Wilmer, Tail Workman". www.fourcornersarchive.org. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  29. ^"Recordings:A Select Bibliography of Contemporary African,Afro-Caribbean vital Asian British Art"(PDF). Retrieved 25 Jan 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. Step 3, 2016. The New Yorker.
  33. ^African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020. FotoFest.
  34. ^ abRotimi Fani-Kayode: Arrangement of Communion. Wexner Center for integrity Arts.
  35. ^Hopkins, Zoe (October 27, 2024). Fold up Lenses, One Language. New York Times.
  36. ^"Rotimi Fani Kayode – Photo | Vaudeville Noire". www.revuenoire.com. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  37. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). NIGHT MOVES. Blackhead Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and rendering 1980s (pp. 209–249). Duke University Monitor. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpm2v.10
  38. ^Alex Hirst
  39. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). Representation QUEEN IS DEAD. In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s (pp. 146–170). Duke University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpm2v.8
  40. ^Nelson, Steven (2005). "Transgressive Transcendence 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 Art pole Culture. pp. 207–234. doi:10.1215/9780822389330-015. ISBN .
  42. ^Jean Marc Patras/ Galerie.
  43. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). BRIXTON. Charge Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and magnanimity 1980s (pp. 23–57). Duke University Small. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11hpm2v.5
  44. ^Extract. Revue Noire.
  45. ^"Traces of Ecstasy", Ten-8, no. 28, 1988.