“On three counts am I an outsider,” wrote Nigerian photographer Romiti Fani-Kayode, “in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for. Such a position gives me a feeling of having very little to lose.”
Fani-Kayode was just 34 when he died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in , the victim of a heart attack following an Aids-related illness. He left behind a body of work that was unashamedly black, African, and gay, showing a tender, sensuous, fantastical image of masculinity, that was always thoroughly political. He worked in an often hostile environment and following his death his work was exhibited only rarely. His portraiture, however, makes an invaluable addition to Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, just opened at the Barbican Centre.
Fani-Kayode was born in Lagos in to a politically powerful family. His father’s role as a Yoruba chief, lawyer, and statesman caused them to flee the country for Britain in at the outbreak of civil war. Fani-Kayode was brought up in Brighton before moving to the USA to study at Georgetown
He is one of the founders of Autograph (Association of Black British Photographers), working with Black Audio Film Collective, advocates for the fight against AIDS. Its difference, he displays it the claims in his life as much as by his photographs.
And although he admits the ambition to create images to undermine the vision set out in the world, what are the similarities between cultures and individuals that it highlights a growing presence of a strong Africa , a Nigeria that have never left with his series 'Ecstasy and Spirituality'.
An Africa that he would join if death did not stop had a December 21, , after only seven years of creative activity.
by Jean Loup Pivin
Exhibitions
group exhibition at Art Show Gallery, London
solo exhibition at B&J Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria
exhibit 'No Comment' at Brixton Art Gallery, London
group exhibition at Oval House Gallery, London
founding member and first chairperson of Autograph (The Association of Black Photographers)
exhibit 'Misfits' at Oval House Gallery, London
solo exhibition at Gallery, London
publication of 'Black Male-White Male, a book of Fani-Kayodé’s photographs'
solo exhibition at Submarine Gallery, Lo
Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s potent portraiture explores desire and ecstasy
For Fani-Kayode, who was born into a Yoruba family in Lagos before they were exiled to England following the civil war in Nigeria in , the studio and his broader practice became a space where he attempted to work through this geographical displacement, his sexuality and the subsequent isolation he experienced from his Nigerian heritage. More crucially, the studio allowed Fani-Kayode to imagine and make visible a visual language of Black African gay imagination that was sorely lacking in photography at the time. He did this by positioning the Black male bodies in his photographs in tandem with Yoruba traditions and deities, sometimes overtly in the form of a mask that obscures the subject’s face and other times through gesture and pose.
According to Sealy, Fani-Kayode's photography broke through the deeply theoretical spaces of art history and Yoruba spirituality and invoked a truly hybrid nature to the work. “He wasn’t looking to be anybody else,” Sealy shares. “He knows where he comes from, in terms of his Yoruba background, but is at the same time exposed to his community in Brixton and Western art hist
Light Work, in partnership with Autograph ABP, is pleased to present Rotimi Fani-Kayode (), a solo retrospective of the work of this seminal and highly influential figure in s black British and African contemporary art. Although his career was cut short by his untimely death at the age of 34, Fani-Kayode nonetheless remains one of the most significant names in the history of black photography.
Curated in collaboration with Mark Sealy and Renée Mussai of Autograph ABP, whose co-founder and first Chair was Rotimi Fani-Kayode, the exhibition features a selection of his most important photographic works produced between , including large-scale color works and arresting black and white images. Fani-Kayode’s photographic portraits explore complex personal and politically-engaged notions of desire, spirituality, and cultural dislocation. They depict the black male body as a focal point both to interpret and probe the boundaries of spiritual and erotic fantasy, and of cultural and sexual difference. Ancestral rituals and a provocative, multi-layered symbolism fuse with archetypal motifs from European and African cultures and subcultures, inspired by what Yoruba priests call “the techn
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