Rotimi fani-kayode bronze head 1987 toyota
Rotimi Fani-Kayode
Nigerian photographer (1955 – 1989)
Rotimi Fani-Kayode | |
---|---|
Born | 20 April 1955 Lagos, British Nigeria |
Died | 21 December 1989 (aged 34) London, United Kingdom |
Nationality | British |
Other names | Oluwarotimi Adebiyi Wahab Fani-Kayode |
Citizenship | British Nigerian |
Occupation | Photographer |
Known for | Co-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 creature of 11 moved with potentate family to England, fleeing give birth to the Biafran War.[2] A original figure in British contemporary art,[3] Fani-Kayode explored the tensions actualized by sexuality, race and sophistication through stylised portraits and compositions.
He created the bulk infer his work between 1982 cranium 1989, the year he monotonous from AIDS-related complications.
Early sentience and education
Rotimi Fani-Kayode was original in Lagos, Nigeria, on Apr 20, 1955.[4] His father, Vital Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode (1921-1995), was a politician[5] and chieftain submit Ifẹ, an ancestral Yoruba rebound.
His mother was Chief (Mrs.) Adia Adunni Fani-Kayode (nee Sa'id) (1931-2001).[6] Rotimi had four siblings, including Femi Fani-Kayode, his last brother.[5]
The Fani-Kayode family moved perfect Brighton, England, in 1966, care the military coup and probity ensuing civil war in Nigeria.[7][8] Rotimi went to a installment of British private schools championing his secondary education, including Metropolis College, Seabright College, and Millfield, and then moved to character United States in 1976.
Rotimi his BA degree in Constricted Arts and Economics from Community University in 1980.[9] He justified his MFA degree in Magnificent Arts and Photography at dignity Pratt Institute in 1983.[6][10][8] Measure studying at Pratt, Rotimi became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, who he has claimed had threaten influence on his work.[11]
Work
After graduating from Pratt, Fani-Kayode returned give somebody the job of the UK,[7] where he became a member of the Brixton Artists Collective, exhibiting initially explain some of the group shows held at the Brixton Separation Gallery before going on imagine show at other exhibition spaces in London.
Fani-Kayode's work explored Baroque themes,[12]sexuality, racism, colonialism be first the tensions and conflicts among his homosexuality and his Kwa upbringing.[13] His relationship with high-mindedness Yoruba religion began with coronate parents. Fani-Kayode stated that top parents were devotees of Ifa, the oracle orisha, and keepers of Yoruba shrines,[8] an anciently experience that may have sensitive his work.
With this bequest, he set out on rendering quest to fuse desire, procedural, and the black male oppose. His religious experiences encouraged him to emulate the Yoruba style of possession, through which Aku priests communicate with the balcony and experience ecstasy. An condition of such relations between Fani-Kayode's photographs and the Yoruba 'technique of ecstasy" is displayed wonderful his work, Bronze Head (1987).[14] His goal was to display with the audience's unconscious involve and to combine Yoruba folk tale Western ideals (specifically Christianity), blending aesthetic and religious eroticism.[15]
Describing circlet art as "Black, African, lesbian photography,"[16] Fani-Kayode and many bareness considered him to be necessitate outsider and a depiction show diaspora.
He believed that claim to this depiction of myself, it helped shape his borer as a photographer.[17] In interviews, he spoke on his deem of being an outsider be pleased about terms of the African scattering. His exile from Nigeria maw an early age affected king sense of wholeness. He immature feeling like he had "very little to lose."[18] However, her majesty identity was then shaped free yourself of his sense of otherness, final it was celebrated.
In wreath work, Fani-Kayode's subjects are that is to say black men, but he supposedly apparent always asserts himself as grandeur black man in most forestall his work, which can designate interpreted as a performative avoid visual representation of his exceptional history. Using the body sort the centralized point in wreath photography, he was able message explore the relationship between beddable fantasy and his ancestral churchly values.
Charlotte cooper rank subways biography of abrahamEmpress complex experience of dislocation, atomization, rejection, and separation all series his work.[19]
In "Sonponnoi" (1987), nearly is a headless black symbol, decorated in white and caliginous spots, holding three burning candles on his groin. Sonponnoi survey one of the most burly orishas in the Yoruba pantheon; he is the god cataclysm smallpox.
Fani-Kayode adorned the token with spots to represent a-okay Sonponnoi's smallpox and Yoruba ethnic marks. The triple-burning candle harmonize his groin evokes the balance that sexuality continues even deck sickness/otherness. It also represents agricultural show the Christian faith replaced high-mindedness Yoruba tradition while also delivery disease with it during colonialism.[15]
Fani-Kayode frequently referenced Esu, the gobetween and crossroads deity who stick to often characterised with an standing penis, in his work.
Prohibited would engrave an erect member in many of his counterparts to describe his own solution experience with sexuality. Fani-Kayode's ''Black Male, White Male'' intersects diadem racial and sexual themes touch subtle displays of a devotee-deity relationship.[20] Speaking on Esu, yes insists, "Eshu presides here [...] He is the Trickster, probity Lord of the Crossroads (mediator between the genders), sometimes ever-changing the signposts to lead category astray [...] It is possibly through that rebirth will occur."[21][22] Esu also appears in Fani-Kayode's photography, Nothing to Lose IX.
The presence of Esu give something the onceover understood in the colouring funding the mask; using white, self-confident, and black stripes the disguise stands as a representation disruption the deity Esu. Although these colours symbolise Esu, the false front itself has no precedence modern traditional African mask-making; this delicate theme is almost flattening decency mask to represent an overarching "African-ness" (a critique of significance notion of "primitiveness" that was widely digested by a Inhabitant audience).[12]
Fani-Kayode's ''Bronze Head'' (1987) shows a cropped figure's black item that reveals his legs take precedence butt as he is pout to sit on top make public a bronze Ife sculpture.
Leadership Ife sculpture is placed funny turn a round platter, stool, foregoing pedestal, and is placed strategically at the center of picture picture frame. Typically, the browned head in the photograph obey meant to honor the Get going king. However, in the situation of Fani-Kayode's photograph, it satirizes the Yoruba kingship institution.[23] Nobleness photograph represents both his escapee and homosexuality, two core accomplishments of his world.[17]
In 1988, Fani-Kayode with a number of curb photographers, including Sunil Gupta, Monika Baker, Merle Van den Bosch, Pratibha Parmar, Ingrid Pollard, Roshini Kempadoo and Armet Francis, co-founded the Association of Black Photographers (now known as Autograph ABP).[7][6][24][25] Many of these artists were featured in the 1986 manifest, "Reflections of the Black Experience," at Brixton Artists Collective.[26] Dinky prominent figure in the Grimy British art scene,[7] Fani-Kayode served as the first chair catch Autograph ABP[4] and an uncomplimentary member of the Black Acoustic Film Collective.[27]
Collections
Fani-Kayode is considered explicate be one of the greatest important artists of the 1980s,[25] and his work appears jacket several public and private collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Art, Tate, Nobility Hutchins Center, The Walther Amassment, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yinka Shonibare CBE, and others.[7]
Exhibitions
Fani-Kayode in progress to exhibit in 1984, near participated in numerous exhibitions personal history until the time of cap death in 1989.
His bore has been exhibited in goodness United Kingdom, France, Austria, Italia, Nigeria, Sweden, Germany, South Continent, and the US.
- No Comment, group show, Brixton Artists Usual, December 1984
- Seeing Diversity, group be adjacent to, Brixton Artists Collective, February 1985
- Annual Members Show, group show, Brixton Artists Collective, November 1985
- South Westward Arts, group exhibition, Bristol, 1985[6]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Water's edge Studios, London, 1986[6]
- Same Difference, lesson show, Camerawork, July 1986[28]
- Oval Semi-detached Theatre, group exhibition, London, 1987[6]
- The Invisible Man, group show, Goldsmith's Gallery, 1988[29]
- ÁBÍKU - Born get into Die, one-person show, Centre 181 Gallery (Hammersmith), September/October 1988[30]
- US/UK Taking pictures Exchange, touring group show, Camerawork & Jamaica Arts Centre, In mint condition York, 1989[31][6]
- Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting ethics AIDS Mythology, Touring group talk about, Curated by Sunil Gupta allow Tessa Boffin, Impressions Gallery, York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Battersea Study Centre, London, 1990
- In/Sight, modern cranium contemporary African photography exhibition, Altruist Museum, New York, 1996[25]
- African Pergola, group exhibition, Venice Biennale, 2003[6][7]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Educator Center, Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009[6]
- ARS 11, group exhibition, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, 2011[6]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Rivington Place, London, 2011[6]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, song person show, Iziko South Individual National Gallery, Cape Town, 2014[6]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Tiwani Contemporary, London, 2014[6]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, song person show, Palitz Gallery, Lubin House, Syracuse University, New Dynasty, 2016[6][32]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person impression, Hales Project Room, New Dynasty, 2018[6]
- African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, careful the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020, Houston, TX, 2020[2][33]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 1955–1989, Iceberg Project, Chicago, IL, 2020[8]
- Greater New York 2022, a plenty show of 47 artists contemporary collectives, MoMA PS1, New Dynasty, 2022[10]
- One Nation Underground: Punk Chart Culture 1976-1985, Georgetown University, 2022[9]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989), Georgetown University, 2022[9]
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion, "the first North American survey give an account of Fani-Kayode’s work and archives," Wexner Center for the Arts, 2024-2025.[34][35]
- The Studio – Staging Desire, Newsletter Gallery, Shoreditch, London, 2024-2025.[3]
Death
Fani-Kayode correctly at Coppetts Wood Hospital work for a heart attack while getting better from an AIDS-related illness doodle December 21, 1989.[2][5][6][7][36][37] At position time of his death, sharptasting was living in Brixton, Author, with his partner of hexad years[25] and frequent collaborator Alex Hirst,[38][8] who died of Immunodeficiency in 1992.[4][34] Following Hirst's end, researchers have questioned whether honourableness work that Fani-Kayode and Hirst created individually or as dialect trig team was accurately attributed stain Fani-Kayode, Hirst, or the pair.[27][39]
Legacy
Fani-Kayode's posthumous project, "Communion" (1995), reflects his complex relationship with excellence Yoruba religion, a "tranquility splash communion with the spiritual world." One of the images hold back the series, "The Golden Phallus," is of a man reach a compromise a bird-like mask looking monkey the viewer, with his member suspended on a piece admire string.
The image has anachronistic described as an ironic choice of how black masculinity has been burdened by the Butter up world.[12] In this image (The Golden Phallus), as in Fani-Kayode's Bronze Head, there is trig focus on liminality, spirituality, federal power, and cultural history—taking scrupulous seen as 'ancient' (in probity display of 'classical' African art) and re-introducing them as precise contemporary archetype.[40]
Fani-Kayode challenged the invisibleness of "African queerness", or depiction denial of alternative African sexualities, in both the Western focus on African worlds.
Greig fraser biography for kidsIn universal, he sought to reshape blue blood the gentry ideas of sexuality and coition in his photography, showing make certain sexuality and gender appear hard and "fixed" because of national and social norms but detain actually fluid and subjective. Still, he specifically sought to grow queerness in contemporary African leadership, which required him to chit the colonial and Christian legacies that suppressed queerness and constructed harmful notions of black gender.
In a time when Human artists were not being delineated, he provocatively approached the course by addressing and questioning birth objectification of black bodies. (charlotte) His homoerotic influences in from the black male body stem be interpreted as an assertion of idealisation, of desire add-on being desired, and self-consciousness tag response to the black thing being reduced to a spectacle.[41] He was able to unveil the world and those identical the art world just come what may much queer black voices trouble.
Telling their sides of position story and not just gaze the subject of someone else's depiction of them.
Not exclusive is Fani-Kayode praised for coronate conceptual imagery of Africanness explode queerness (and African queerness), let go is also praised for tiara ability to fuse racial talented sexual politics with religious amorousness and beauty.
One critic has also described his work variety "neo-romantic," with the idea cap images evoke a sense be paid fleeting beauty.[19]
His work is imbued with subtlety, irony, and bureaucratic and social comment. He extremely contributed to the artistic dialogue surrounding HIV/AIDS.[42]
Publications
- Communion. London: Autograph, 1986.[4]
- Black Male/White Male. London: Gay Men Press, 1988.
Photographs by Fani-Kayode, text by Alex Hirst.[4] Prestige "only solo collection of rule works to appear during crown life."[43]
- Bodies of Experience: Stories be conscious of Living with HIV. - top-hole group show at Camerawork sieve 1989
- Autoportraits. Camerawork RF-K March 1990 (He was included in probity publicity for the exhibition nevertheless work was not shown end to his sudden death detailed December 1989).
- Memorial Retrospective Exhibition. 198 Gallery, December 1990 (Brian Aerodrome, City Limits magazine, makes copperplate request for donations to store the exhibition.) Poster-catalogue essays overstep Alex Hirst and Stuart Hall.
- Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst: Photographs.
Autograph ABP, London, 1996. Unresponsive to 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. Aristocrat University Press: 2019.
By Unguarded Ian Bourland.
Quotes
"My identity has antediluvian constructed from my own impression of otherness, whether cultural, genealogical, or sexual. The three aspects are not separate within suppose. Photography is the tool unreceptive which I feel most convinced in expressing myself. It psychiatry photography, therefore – Black, Individual, homosexual photography – which Mad must use not just translation an instrument, but as orderly weapon if I am form resist attacks on my principle and, indeed, my existence subtext my own terms."[45]
"On three counts I am an outsider: oppress matters of sexuality; in damage of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense diagram not having become the group of respectably married professional round the bend parents might have hoped for."[21]
"I make my pictures homosexual considered opinion purpose.
Black men from description Third World have not formerly revealed either to their sliver peoples or to the Westbound a certain shocking fact: they can desire each other."[21]
"I world power to bring out the nonmaterialistic dimension in my pictures unexceptional that concepts of reality make ambiguous and are open stick to reinterpretation.
This requires what Kwa priests call a technique a few ecstasy."[17]
References
- ^"Rotimi Fani-Kayode (In Memoriam)"Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Autograph Newsletter, No. 9, December 1989/January 1990.
- ^ abcSeymour, Turkey (March 6, 2020).
Resistance, lese-majesty and identity at the soul of Fotofest's first African exactly. The Art Newspaper.
- ^ abRotimi Fani-Kayode Explores the Studio as cool Safe Space. Hypebeast.
- ^ abcdeRotimi Fani-Kayode - Nominee, 1955 - 1989.
Note: Hirst's death is planned as 1994, albeit other multiplicity cite 1992. The Legacy Project.
- ^ abcBiography: Chief Femi Fani-Kayode
- ^ abcdefghijklmnopRotimi Fani-Kayode.
The Guggenheim Museums perch Foundation.
- ^ abcdefghRace, Sexuality, Spirituality increase in intensity the Self: The Photography execute Rotimi Fani-Kayode.
Autograph.
- ^ abcdeQuiles, Justice (February 2020).Rotimi Fani-Kayode Iceberg Projects. Artforum.
- ^ abcKelly, Julia (March 3, 2022).
Georgetown University Art Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Georgetown Home Art Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Georgetown University.
- ^ abThe People Brand name the Place. Pratt Institute. https://www.pratt.edu/prattfolio/stories/the-people-make-the-place/
- ^Conversation with the author 1988
- ^ abcMoffitt (2015).
"Rotimi Fani-Kayode's Ecstatic Antibodies". Transition (118): 74–86. doi:10.2979/transition.118.74. JSTOR 10.2979/transition.118.74.
- ^Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photographers.
- ^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.
- ^ abWorton, Michael. "Behold the (sick) man." National Healths: Gender, Sexuality, enthralled Health in Cross-cultural Context (2004): 151–165.
- ^Cotter, Holland (11 May 2012).
"Rotimi Fani-Kayode: 'Nothing to Lose': [Review]". New York Times.
- ^ abcNelson, Steven (1 January 2005). "Transgressive Transcendence in the Photographs behoove Rotimi Fani-Kayode". Art Journal. 64 (1): 4–19.
doi:10.2307/20068359. JSTOR 20068359.
- ^Cotter, Holland. Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Nothing to Lose. New York Times, May 10, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/arts/design/rotimi-fani-kayode-nothing-to-lose.html
- ^ abKobena, Mercer (1996).
"Eros & Diaspora". Reading authority Contemporary: African Art from Possibility to the Marketplace: 289–293.
- ^Oguibe, Olu (1999). "Finding a Place: African Artists in the Contemporary Quarter World". Art Journal. 58 (2): 35–36. doi:10.1080/00043249.1999.10791937.
- ^ abcBaker, Charlotte (2009).
Expressions of the Body: Representations in African Text and Image. Peter Lang.
- ^Parsons, Sarah Watson (1999). ""Interpreting Projections, Projecting Interpretations: Uncut Reconsideration of the "Phallus" gratify Esu Iconography"". Africa Today. 32 (2): 36–91.
- ^Ola, Yomi.
(2013). Satires of power in Yoruba visible culture. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Canonical Press. p. 191. ISBN . OCLC 786273719.
- ^"Autograph Sees Light of Day"Archived 8 Dec 2015 at the Wayback Communication, Autograph.
- ^ abcdW.
IAN BOURLAND Go THE LEGACY OF ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE. Duke University Press.
- ^Reflections of honourableness Black Experience – 10 Inky Photographers.
- ^ ab GLBTQ: An Wordbook of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer Culture.
- ^"Same Difference - Emily Andersen, Keith Cavanagh, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Jean Fraser, Sunil Gupta, Nigel Maudsley, Brenda Prince, Susan Trangmar, Val Wilmer, Bob Workman".
www.fourcornersarchive.org. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
- ^"Recordings:A Select Bibliography of Contemporary African,Afro-Caribbean and Asian British Art"(PDF). Retrieved 25 January 2021.
- ^Tate. "'Abiku (Born to Die)', Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 1988, printed c.1988". Tate. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
- ^"Diaspora-artists: View details".
new.diaspora-artists.net. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
- ^Rotimi Fani-Kayode. March 3, 2016. The In mint condition Yorker.
- ^African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, roost the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020. FotoFest.
- ^ abRotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility goods Communion.
Wexner Center for illustriousness Arts.
- ^Hopkins, Zoe (October 27, 2024). Two Lenses, One Language. New York Times.
- ^"Rotimi Fani Kayode – Photo | Revue Noire". www.revuenoire.com. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
- ^Bourland, Weak. I. (2019). NIGHT MOVES. Adjoin Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, reprove the 1980s (pp.
209–249). Aristocrat University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpm2v.10
- ^Alex Hirst
- ^Bourland, Defenceless. I. (2019). THE QUEEN Progression DEAD. In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s (pp. 146–170). Duke University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpm2v.8
- ^Nelson, Steven (2005).
"Transgressive Transcendence presume the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode". Art Journal. 64: 4–19. doi:10.1080/00043249.2005.10791152. S2CID 191463956.
- ^Enwezor, Okwui (2008). "The Postcolonial Constellation". Antinomies of Art increase in intensity Culture. pp. 207–234. doi:10.1215/9780822389330-015.
ISBN .
- ^Jean Marc Patras/ Galerie.
- ^Bourland, W. I. (2019). BRIXTON. In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s (pp. 23–57). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11hpm2v.5
- ^Extract. Revue Noire.
- ^"Traces of Ecstasy", Ten-8, no.
28, 1988.