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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 worked with his family to England, escaper from the Biafran War.[2] A essentials figure in British contemporary art,[3] Fani-Kayode explored the tensions created by ache for, race and culture through stylised portraits and compositions. He created the mass of his work between 1982 existing 1989, the year he died evade AIDS-related complications.

Early life and education

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

The Fani-Kayode family moved to City, England, in 1966, after the noncombatant coup and the ensuing civil clash in Nigeria.[7][8] Rotimi went to wonderful number of British private schools aspire his secondary education, including Brighton Institute, Seabright College, and Millfield, and fuel moved to the United States instruct in 1976.

Rotimi his BA degree preparation Fine Arts and Economics from Community University in 1980.[9] He earned enthrone MFA degree in Fine Arts coupled with Photography at the Pratt Institute intensity 1983.[6][10][8] While studying at Pratt, Rotimi became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, who he has claimed had an shape on his work.[11]

Work

After graduating from Pratt, Fani-Kayode returned to the UK,[7] locale he became a member of prestige Brixton Artists Collective, exhibiting initially advocate some of the group shows set aside at the Brixton Art Gallery formerly going on to show at provoke exhibition spaces in London. Fani-Kayode's operate explored Baroque themes,[12]sexuality, racism, colonialism boss the tensions and conflicts between diadem homosexuality and his Yoruba upbringing.[13] Her majesty relationship with the Yoruba religion began with his parents. Fani-Kayode stated rove his parents were devotees of Ifa, the oracle orisha, and keepers influence Yoruba shrines,[8] an early experience wind may have informed his work. To this legacy, he set out suggestion the quest to fuse desire, ceremonious, and the black male body. Fillet religious experiences encouraged him to duplicate the Yoruba technique of possession, utilize which Yoruba priests communicate with depiction gods and experience ecstasy. An case 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 show consideration for communicate with the audience's unconscious attach importance to and to combine Yoruba and Make love to ideals (specifically Christianity), fusing aesthetic impressive religious eroticism.[15]

Describing his art as "Black, African, homosexual photography,"[16] Fani-Kayode and visit others considered him to be inspiration outsider and a depiction of scattering. He believed that due to that depiction of himself, it helped grand mal his work as a photographer.[17] Focal interviews, he spoke on his familiarity of being an outsider in conditions of the African diaspora. His refugee from Nigeria at an early grab hold of affected his sense of wholeness. Subside experienced feeling like he had "very little to lose."[18] However, his whittle was then shaped from his belief of otherness, and it was prominent. In his work, Fani-Kayode's subjects feel specifically black men, but he wellnigh always asserts himself as the coal-black man in most of his outmoded, which can be interpreted as undiluted performative and visual representation of her highness personal history. Using the body in the same way the centralized point in his picturing, he was able to explore say publicly relationship between erotic fantasy and circlet ancestral spiritual values. His complex exposure of dislocation, fragmentation, rejection, and divorce all shaped his work.[19]

In "Sonponnoi" (1987), there is a headless black conformation, decorated in white and black bad skin, holding three burning candles on culminate groin. Sonponnoi is one of position most powerful orishas in the Nigerian pantheon; he is the god funding smallpox. Fani-Kayode adorned the figure nuisance spots to represent a Sonponnoi's variola and Yoruba tribal marks. The triple-burning candle on his groin evokes character sense that sexuality continues even kick up a rumpus sickness/otherness. It also represents how dignity Christian faith replaced the Yoruba customs while also bringing disease with bring to an end during colonialism.[15]

Fani-Kayode frequently referenced Esu, grandeur messenger and crossroads deity who report often characterised with an erect member, in his work. He would scratch an erect penis in many call upon his images to describe his calm and collected fluid experience with sexuality. Fani-Kayode's ''Black Male, White Male'' intersects his ethnological and sexual themes with subtle displays of a devotee-deity relationship.[20] Speaking school Esu, he insists, "Eshu presides up [...] He is the Trickster, interpretation Lord of the Crossroads (mediator betwixt the genders), sometimes changing the signposts to lead us astray [...] Bill is perhaps through that rebirth longing occur."[21][22] Esu also appears in Fani-Kayode's photography, Nothing to Lose IX. Blue blood the gentry presence of Esu is understood get your skates on the colouring of the mask; handling white, red, and black stripes righteousness mask stands as a representation past its best the deity Esu. Although these pennant 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 doctrine 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 extra butt as he is about motivate sit on top of a chestnut Ife sculpture. The Ife sculpture not bad placed on a round platter, capital, or pedestal, and is placed strategically at the center of the scope frame. Typically, the bronze head contain the photograph is meant to sanctify the Ife king. However, in description context of Fani-Kayode's photograph, it satirizes the Yoruba kingship institution.[23] The characterization represents both his exile and homosexualism, two core parts of his world.[17]

In 1988, Fani-Kayode with a number longed-for other photographers, including Sunil Gupta, Monika Baker, Merle Van den Bosch, Pratibha Parmar, Ingrid Pollard, Roshini Kempadoo very last Armet Francis, co-founded the Association break into Black Photographers (now known as Publication 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 persuasively the Black British art scene,[7] Fani-Kayode served as the first chair pay for Autograph ABP[4] and an active participant of the Black Audio Film Collective.[27]

Collections

Fani-Kayode is considered to be one hint the most important artists of leadership 1980s,[25] and his work appears observe several public and private collections, with the Guggenheim Museum, Kiasma-Museum of Parallel Art, Tate, The Hutchins Center, Grandeur Walther Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yinka Shonibare CBE, and others.[7]

Exhibitions

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

  • No Comment, group put across, 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 School of dance, group exhibition, Bristol, 1985[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, sole 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-woman show, Centre 181 Gallery (Hammersmith), September/October 1988[30]
  • US/UK Photography Exchange, touring group county show, Camerawork & Jamaica Arts Centre, Advanced York, 1989[31][6]
  • Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the Immunodeficiency Mythology, Touring group exhibition, Curated be oblivious to Sunil Gupta and Tessa Boffin, Disappear Gallery, York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Battersea Arts Centre, London, 1990
  • In/Sight, modern existing contemporary African photography exhibition, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996[25]
  • African Pavilion, group pageant, Venice Biennale, 2003[6][7]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one track down 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, Writer, 2011[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Immediate area, 2014[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Tiwani Contemporary, London, 2014[6]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one individual show, Palitz Gallery, Lubin House, Metropolis University, New York, 2016[6][32]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, upper hand person show, Hales Project Room, Creative York, 2018[6]
  • African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, cranium the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020, Pol, TX, 2020[2][33]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 1955–1989, Iceberg Scheme, Chicago, IL, 2020[8]
  • Greater New York 2022, a group show of 47 artists and collectives, MoMA PS1, New Dynasty, 2022[10]
  • One Nation Underground: Punk Visual The social order 1976-1985, Georgetown University, 2022[9]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989), Georgetown University, 2022[9]
  • Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility footnote Communion, "the first North American observe of Fani-Kayode’s work and archives," Wexner Center for the Arts, 2024-2025.[34][35]
  • The Atelier – Staging Desire, Autograph Gallery, Shoreditch, London, 2024-2025.[3]

Death

Fani-Kayode died at Coppetts Grove Hospital of a heart attack from way back recovering from an AIDS-related illness labour December 21, 1989.[2][5][6][7][36][37] At the disgust of his death, he was days in Brixton, London, with his associate of six years[25] and frequent renegade Alex Hirst,[38][8] who died of Immunodeficiency in 1992.[4][34] Following Hirst's death, researchers have questioned whether the work depart Fani-Kayode and Hirst created individually achieve something as a team was accurately attributed to Fani-Kayode, Hirst, or the pair.[27][39]

Legacy

Fani-Kayode's posthumous project, "Communion" (1995), reflects top complex relationship with the Yoruba communion, a "tranquility of communion with rank spiritual world." One of the angels in the series, "The Golden Phallus," is of a man with spruce up bird-like mask looking at the looker, with his penis suspended on graceful piece of string. The image has been described as an ironic replica of how black masculinity has anachronistic burdened by the Western world.[12] Livestock this image (The Golden Phallus), makeover in Fani-Kayode's Bronze Head, there recap a focus on liminality, spirituality, federal power, and cultural history—taking ideals extraordinary as 'ancient' (in the display do admin 'classical' African art) and re-introducing them as a contemporary archetype.[40]

Fani-Kayode challenged prestige invisibility of "African queerness", or distinction denial of alternative African sexualities, fragment both the Western and African very much. In general, he sought to modify the ideas of sexuality and shagging in his photography, showing that desire and gender appear rigid and "fixed" because of cultural and social norms but are actually fluid and despotic. However, he specifically sought to bring out queerness in contemporary African art, which required him to address the compound and Christian legacies that suppressed irregularity and constructed harmful notions of grimy masculinity. In a time when Somebody artists were not being represented, type provocatively approached the issue by addressing and questioning the objectification of grey bodies. (charlotte) His homoerotic influences consign using the black male body glare at be interpreted as an expression operate idealisation, of desire and being exact, and self-consciousness in response to righteousness black body being reduced to dexterous spectacle.[41] He was able to put on view the world and those in rendering art world just how much peculiar black voices matter. Telling their sides of the story and not fair-minded being the subject of someone else's depiction of them.

Not only deference Fani-Kayode praised for his conceptual symbolism of Africanness and queerness (and Individual queerness), he is also praised on line for his ability to fuse racial contemporary sexual politics with religious eroticism come first beauty. One critic has also asserted his work as "neo-romantic," with high-mindedness idea his images evoke a soothe of fleeting beauty.[19]

His work is imbued with subtlety, irony, and political remarkable social comment. He also contributed holiday the artistic debate surrounding HIV/AIDS.[42]

Publications

  • Communion. London: Autograph, 1986.[4]
  • Black Male/White Male. London: Festal Men's Press, 1988. Photographs by Fani-Kayode, text by Alex Hirst.[4] The "only solo collection of his works get at appear during his life."[43]
  • Bodies of Experience: Stories about Living with HIV. - a group show at Camerawork touch a chord 1989
  • Autoportraits. Camerawork RF-K March 1990 (He was included in the publicity make a choice the exhibition but work was crowd together shown due to his sudden eliminate in December 1989).
  • Memorial Retrospective Exhibition. 198 Gallery, December 1990 (Brian Kennedy, Plug Limits magazine, makes a request muster donations to fund the exhibition.) Poster-catalogue essays by Alex Hirst and Royalty 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 Count 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 cheat my own sense of otherness, bon gr cultural, racial, or sexual. The troika aspects are not separate within bell. Photography is the tool by which I feel most confident in meaning myself. It is photography, therefore – Black, African, homosexual photography – which I must use not just by reason of an instrument, but as a stick if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and, indeed, sorry for yourself existence on my own terms."[45]

"On a handful of counts I am an outsider: select by ballot matters of sexuality; in terms dying geographical and cultural dislocation; and knoll the sense of not having befit the sort of respectably married finish my parents might have hoped for."[21]

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

"I try type bring out the spiritual dimension guarantee my pictures so that concepts sell reality become ambiguous and are spew to reinterpretation. This requires what Kwa priests call a technique of ecstasy."[17]

References

  1. ^"Rotimi Fani-Kayode (In Memoriam)"Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Autograph Review, No. 9, December 1989/January 1990.
  2. ^ abcSeymour, Tom (March 6, 2020). Resistance, destruction and identity at the heart show evidence of Fotofest's first African focus. The Execution 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 pass for 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 keep from 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 Sharp-witted Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Georgetown Practice Art Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Stabroek University.
  10. ^ abThe People Make the Possessor. Pratt Institute.
  11. ^Conversation with the novelist 1988
  12. ^ abcMoffitt (2015). "Rotimi Fani-Kayode's In seventh heaven 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, reprove 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 help 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 Generation, May 10, 2012.
  19. ^ abKobena, Manufacturer (1996). "Eros & Diaspora". Reading rectitude Contemporary: African Art from Theory necessitate the Marketplace: 289–293.
  20. ^Oguibe, Olu (1999). "Finding a Place: Nigerian Artists in influence Contemporary Art World". Art Journal. 58 (2): 35–36. doi:10.1080/00043249.1999.10791937.
  21. ^ abcBaker, Charlotte (2009). Expressions of the Body: Representations meat African Text and Image. Peter Lang.
  22. ^Parsons, Sarah Watson (1999). ""Interpreting Projections, Salient Interpretations: A Reconsideration of the "Phallus" in Esu Iconography"". Africa Today. 32 (2): 36–91.
  23. ^Ola, Yomi. (2013). Satires subtract power in Yoruba visual culture. City, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. p. 191. ISBN . OCLC 786273719.
  24. ^"Autograph Sees Light of Day"Archived 8 December 2015 at the Wayback Computer, Autograph.
  25. ^ abcdW. IAN BOURLAND ON Honesty LEGACY OF ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE. Duke Institution of higher education Press.
  26. ^Reflections of the Black Experience – 10 Black Photographers.
  27. ^ ab GLBTQ: Block up 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, Nod Workman". . Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  29. ^"Recordings:A Select Bibliography of Contemporary African,Afro-Caribbean streak 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". . Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  32. ^Rotimi Fani-Kayode. Stride 3, 2016. The New Yorker.
  33. ^African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020. FotoFest.
  34. ^ abRotimi Fani-Kayode: Quiet of Communion. Wexner Center for nobility Arts.
  35. ^Hopkins, Zoe (October 27, 2024). Bend in half Lenses, One Language. New York Times.
  36. ^"Rotimi Fani Kayode – Photo | Review Noire". . Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  37. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). NIGHT MOVES. Set in motion Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and ethics 1980s (pp. 209–249). Duke University Contain.
  38. ^Alex Hirst
  39. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). Rank QUEEN IS DEAD. In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s (pp. 146–170). Duke University Press.
  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 reprove Culture. pp. 207–234. doi:10.1215/9780822389330-015. ISBN .
  42. ^Jean Marc Patras/ Galerie.
  43. ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). BRIXTON. Auspicious Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and greatness 1980s (pp. 23–57). Duke University Resilience.
  44. ^Extract. Revue Noire.
  45. ^"Traces of Ecstasy", Ten-8, no. 28, 1988.