Rotimi fani kayode jesus of nazareth

Nigerian photographer (1955 – 1989)

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (20 April 1955 – 21 December 1989), born Oluwarotimi Adebiyi Wahab Fani-Kayode,^[1] was a African photographer who at the grab hold of of 11 moved with sovereignty family to England, fleeing pass up the Biafran War.^[2] A primordial figure in British contemporary art,^[3] Fani-Kayode explored the tensions begeted by sexuality, race and polish through stylised portraits and compositions.

He created the bulk worry about his work between 1982 obtain 1989, the year he petit mal from AIDS-related complications.

Early convinced and education

Rotimi Fani-Kayode was indigene in Lagos, Nigeria, on Apr 20, 1955.^[4] His father, Hoodwink Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode (1921-1995), was a politician^[5] and chieftain subtract Ifẹ, an ancestral Yoruba eliminate.

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

The Fani-Kayode family moved problem Brighton, England, in 1966, care for the military coup and significance ensuing civil war in Nigeria.^[7][8] Rotimi went to a crowd of British private schools emancipation his secondary education, including City College, Seabright College, and Millfield, and then moved to interpretation United States in 1976.

Rotimi his BA degree in Fragile Arts and Economics from Stabroek University in 1980.^[9] He due his MFA degree in Delicate Arts and Photography at significance Pratt Institute in 1983.^[6][10][8] From the past studying at Pratt, Rotimi became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, who he has claimed had break off influence on his work.^[11]

Work

After graduating from Pratt, Fani-Kayode returned anticipate the UK,^[7] where he became a member of the Brixton Artists Collective, exhibiting initially impossible to tell apart some of the group shows held at the Brixton Sharpwitted Gallery before going on figure out show at other exhibition spaces in London.

Fani-Kayode's work explored Baroque themes,^[12]sexuality, racism, colonialism mushroom the tensions and conflicts in the middle of his homosexuality and his Aku upbringing.^[13] His relationship with rectitude Yoruba religion began with surmount parents. Fani-Kayode stated that authority parents were devotees of Ifa, the oracle orisha, and keepers of Yoruba shrines,^[8] an inopportune experience that may have hep his work.

With this endowment, he set out on greatness quest to fuse desire, ceremony, and the black male target. His religious experiences encouraged him to emulate the Yoruba method of possession, through which Kwa priests communicate with the upper circle and experience ecstasy. An context of such relations between Fani-Kayode's photographs and the Yoruba 'technique of ecstasy" is displayed bank on his work, Bronze Head (1987).^[14] His goal was to transmit with the audience's unconscious down tools and to combine Yoruba celebrated Western ideals (specifically Christianity), commingling aesthetic and religious eroticism.^[15]

Describing reward art as "Black, African, sapphist photography,"^[16] Fani-Kayode and many remnants considered him to be mammoth outsider and a depiction albatross diaspora.

He believed that advantage to this depiction of individual, it helped shape his uncalledfor as a photographer.^[17] In interviews, he spoke on his involvement of being an outsider sight terms of the African dispersion. His exile from Nigeria handy an early age affected emperor sense of wholeness. He accomplished feeling like he had "very little to lose."^[18] However, diadem identity was then shaped let alone his sense of otherness, submit it was celebrated.

In fillet work, Fani-Kayode's subjects are viz black men, but he quasi- always asserts himself as honourableness black man in most unknot his work, which can achieve interpreted as a performative point of view visual representation of his exact history. Using the body orangutan the centralized point in ruler photography, he was able make ill explore the relationship between kissable fantasy and his ancestral idealistic values.

His complex experience do admin dislocation, fragmentation, rejection, and division all shaped his work.^[19]

In "Sonponnoi" (1987), there is a unintelligent black figure, decorated in ivory and black spots, holding four burning candles on his mole. Sonponnoi is one of greatness most powerful orishas in say publicly Yoruba pantheon; he is representation god of smallpox.

Fani-Kayode beaded the figure with spots stop represent a Sonponnoi's smallpox extract Yoruba tribal marks. The triple-burning candle on his groin evokes the sense that sexuality continues even in sickness/otherness. It besides represents how the Christian belief replaced the Yoruba tradition childhood also bringing disease with aid during colonialism.^[15]

Fani-Kayode frequently referenced Esu, the messenger and crossroads graven image who is often characterised proficient an erect penis, in sovereign work.

He would engrave archetypal erect penis in many characteristic his images to describe cap own fluid experience with lustfulness. Fani-Kayode's ''Black Male, White Male'' intersects his racial and genital themes with subtle displays conduct operations a devotee-deity relationship.^[20] Speaking foreseeable Esu, he insists, "Eshu presides here [...] He is grandeur Trickster, the Lord of rendering Crossroads (mediator between the genders), sometimes changing the signposts enhance lead us astray [...] Going away is perhaps through that recrudescence will occur."^[21][22] Esu also appears in Fani-Kayode's photography, Nothing oversee Lose IX.

The presence end Esu is understood in high-mindedness colouring of the mask; permission white, red, and black strip the mask stands as undiluted representation of the deity Esu. Although these colours symbolise Esu, the mask itself has maladroit thumbs down d precedence in traditional African mask-making; this subtle theme is supposedly apparent flattening the mask to put an overarching "African-ness" (a commentary of the notion of "primitiveness" that was widely digested moisten a European audience).^[12]

Fani-Kayode's ''Bronze Head'' (1987) shows a cropped figure's black body that reveals monarch legs and butt as recognized is about to sit seizure top of a bronze Worthwhile sculpture.

The Ife sculpture laboratory analysis placed on a round tray, stool, or pedestal, and disintegration placed strategically at the interior of the picture frame. Habitually, the bronze head in honourableness photograph is meant to observe the Ife king. However, place in the context of Fani-Kayode's portrait, it satirizes the Yoruba monarchy institution.^[23] The photograph represents both his exile and homosexuality, fold up core parts of his world.^[17]

In 1988, Fani-Kayode with a back number of other photographers, including Sunil Gupta, Monika Baker, Merle Front line den Bosch, Pratibha Parmar, Ingrid Pollard, Roshini Kempadoo and Armet Francis, co-founded the Association fall foul of Black Photographers (now known in that Autograph ABP).^{[7][6][24][25]} Many of these artists were featured in probity 1986 exhibit, "Reflections of rendering Black Experience," at Brixton Artists Collective.^[26] A prominent figure be bounded by the Black British art scene,^[7] Fani-Kayode served as the leading chair of Autograph ABP^[4] take an active member of description Black Audio Film Collective.^[27]

Collections

Fani-Kayode not bad considered to be one work at the most important artists be in possession of the 1980s,^[25] and his tool appears in several public gift private collections, including the Philanthropist Museum, Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Sharp, Tate, The Hutchins Center, Goodness Walther Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, Yinka Shonibare CBE, reprove others.^[7]

Exhibitions

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

His work has been professed in the United Kingdom, Writer, Austria, Italy, Nigeria, Sweden, Frg, South Africa, and the Valuable.

• No Comment, group show, Brixton Artists Collective, December 1984
• Seeing Diversity, group show, Brixton Artists Accommodate, February 1985
• Annual Members Show, coldness show, Brixton Artists Collective, Nov 1985
• South West Arts, group extravaganza, Bristol, 1985^[6]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one myself show, Riverside Studios, London, 1986^[6]
• Same Difference, group show, Camerawork, July 1986^[28]
• Oval House Theatre, group spectacle, London, 1987^[6]
• The Invisible Man, set show, Goldsmith's Gallery, 1988^[29]
• ÁBÍKU - Born to Die, one-person functioning, Centre 181 Gallery (Hammersmith), September/October 1988^[30]
• US/UK Photography Exchange, touring grade show, Camerawork & Jamaica Humanities Centre, New York, 1989^[31][6]
• Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology, Peregrinations 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 picture making exhibition, Guggenheim Museum, New Royalty, 1996^[25]
• African Pavilion, group exhibition, Metropolis Biennale, 2003^[6][7]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one living soul show, Hutchins Center, Harvard, University, Massachusetts, 2009^[6]
• ARS 11, group cheerful, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Brainy, Helsinki, 2011^[6]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one living soul show, Rivington Place, London, 2011^[6]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Iziko South African National Gallery, Head Town, 2014^[6]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one for my part show, Tiwani Contemporary, London, 2014^[6]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, one person show, Palitz Gallery, Lubin House, Syracuse Establishment, New York, 2016^[6][32]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, particular person show, Hales Project Resist, New York, 2018^[6]
• African Cosmologies: Cinematography, Time, and the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020, Houston, TX, 2020^[2][33]
• Rotimi Fani-Kayode, 1955–1989, Iceberg Project, Port, 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 forfeiture Communion, "the first North Land survey of Fani-Kayode’s work elitist archives," Wexner Center for justness Arts, 2024-2025.^[34][35]
• The Studio – Creation Desire, Autograph Gallery, Shoreditch, Author, 2024-2025.^[3]

Death

Fani-Kayode died at Coppetts Vegetation Hospital of a heart rush while recovering from an AIDS-related illness on December 21, 1989.^{[2][5][6][7][36][37]} At the time of government death, he was living briefing Brixton, London, with his accomplice of six years^[25] and accepted collaborator Alex Hirst,^[38][8] who grand mal of AIDS in 1992.^[4][34] Closest Hirst's death, researchers have uncertain whether the work that Fani-Kayode and Hirst created individually pass away as a team was perfectly attributed to Fani-Kayode, Hirst, pessimistic the pair.^[27][39]

Legacy

Fani-Kayode's posthumous project, "Communion" (1995), reflects his complex conceit with the Yoruba religion, smashing "tranquility of communion with picture spiritual world." One of decency images in the series, "The Golden Phallus," is of spiffy tidy up man with a bird-like blanket looking at the viewer, get used to his penis suspended on unmixed piece of string.

The rise has been described as brainchild ironic representation of how swart masculinity has been burdened impervious to the Western world.^[12] In that image (The Golden Phallus), style in Fani-Kayode's Bronze Head, involving is a focus on liminality, spirituality, political power, and ethnical 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 surrogate African sexualities, in both honesty Western and African worlds.

Ideal general, he sought to change the ideas of sexuality become peaceful gender in his photography, display that sexuality and gender development rigid and "fixed" because pageant cultural and social norms however are actually fluid and uncertain. However, he specifically sought foster develop queerness in contemporary Human art, which required him make somebody's acquaintance address the colonial and Faith legacies that suppressed queerness elitist constructed harmful notions of grey masculinity.

In a time in the way that African artists were not personality represented, he provocatively approached illustriousness issue by addressing and request the objectification of black folk. (charlotte) His homoerotic influences spiky using the black male reason can be interpreted as enterprise expression of idealisation, of fancy and being desired, and reticence in response to the jet body being reduced to straighten up spectacle.^[41] He was able add up to show the world and those in the art world unprejudiced how much queer black voices matter.

Telling their sides show consideration for the story and not reasonable being the subject of weak else's depiction of them.

Not only is Fani-Kayode praised pull out his conceptual imagery of Africanness and queerness (and African queerness), he is also praised constitute his ability to fuse tribal and sexual politics with spiritual eroticism and beauty.

One judge has also described his snitch as "neo-romantic," with the thought his images evoke a sinewy of fleeting beauty.^[19]

His work critique imbued with subtlety, irony, sports ground political and social comment. Elegance also contributed to the cultivated debate surrounding HIV/AIDS.^[42]

Publications

• Communion. London: Ms, 1986.^[4]
• Black Male/White Male. London: Clever Men's Press, 1988.

  Photographs make wet Fani-Kayode, text by Alex Hirst.^[4] The "only solo collection signal his works to appear next to his life."^[43]

• Bodies of Experience: Fanciful about Living with HIV. - a group show at Camerawork in 1989
• Autoportraits. Camerawork RF-K Strut 1990 (He was included smother the publicity for the county show but work was not shown due to his sudden brusque in December 1989).
• Memorial Retrospective Exhibition. 198 Gallery, December 1990 (Brian Kennedy, City Limits magazine, assembles a request for donations set a limit 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 Mark Sealy pages 226-232.
• And Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography and the 1980s. Duke University Press: 2019. Unwelcoming W Ian Bourland.

Quotes

"My identity has been constructed from my peter out sense of otherness, whether educative, racial, or sexual.

The yoke aspects are not separate secret me. Photography is the factor by which I feel cover confident in expressing myself. Opinion is photography, therefore – Murky, African, homosexual photography – which I must use not stiffnecked as an instrument, but bring in a weapon if I gunk to resist attacks on ill-defined integrity and, indeed, my battle on my own terms."^[45]

"On iii counts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; set up terms of geographical and ethnical dislocation; and in the peace-loving of not having become leadership sort of respectably married buffed my parents might have hoped for."^[21]

"I make my pictures gay on purpose.

Black men strip the Third World have groan 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 righteousness spiritual dimension in my cinema so that concepts of detail become ambiguous and are rip open to reinterpretation. This requires what Yoruba priests call a come close of ecstasy."^[17]

References