Rotimi Fani-Kayode

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Rotimi Fani-Kayode
Wikirotimi.jpg
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 moved with his family to England, fleeing from the Biafran War. [2] A seminal figure in British contemporary art, [3] Fani-Kayode explored the tensions created by sexuality, race and culture through stylised portraits and compositions. He created the bulk of his work between 1982 and 1989, the year he died from AIDS-related complications.

Contents

Early life and education

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

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

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

Work

After graduating from Pratt, Fani-Kayode returned to the UK, [7] where he became a member of the Brixton Artists Collective, exhibiting initially in some of the group shows held at the Brixton Art Gallery before going on to show at other exhibition spaces in London. Fani-Kayode's work explored Baroque themes, [12] sexuality, racism, colonialism and the tensions and conflicts between his homosexuality and his Yoruba upbringing. [13] His relationship with the Yoruba religion began with his parents. Fani-Kayode stated that his parents were devotees of Ifa, the oracle orisha, and keepers of Yoruba shrines, [8] an early experience that may have informed his work. With this legacy, he set out on the quest to fuse desire, ritual, and the black male body. His religious experiences encouraged him to emulate the Yoruba technique of possession, through which Yoruba priests communicate with the gods and experience ecstasy. An example 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 to communicate with the audience's unconscious mind and to combine Yoruba and Western ideals (specifically Christianity), fusing aesthetic and religious eroticism. [15]

Describing his art as "Black, African, homosexual photography," [16] Fani-Kayode and many others considered him to be an outsider and a depiction of diaspora. He believed that due to this depiction of himself, it helped shape his work as a photographer. [17] In interviews, he spoke on his experience of being an outsider in terms of the African diaspora. His exile from Nigeria at an early age affected his sense of wholeness. He experienced feeling like he had "very little to lose." [18] However, his identity was then shaped from his sense of otherness, and it was celebrated. In his work, Fani-Kayode's subjects are specifically black men, but he almost always asserts himself as the black man in most of his work, which can be interpreted as a performative and visual representation of his personal history. Using the body as the centralized point in his photography, he was able to explore the relationship between erotic fantasy and his ancestral spiritual values. His complex experience of dislocation, fragmentation, rejection, and separation all shaped his work. [19]

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

Fani-Kayode frequently referenced Esu, the messenger and crossroads deity who is often characterised with an erect penis, in his work. He would engrave an erect penis in many of his images to describe his own fluid experience with sexuality. Fani-Kayode's ''Black Male, White Male'' intersects his racial and sexual themes with subtle displays of a devotee-deity relationship. [20] Speaking on Esu, he insists, "Eshu presides here [...] He is the Trickster, the Lord of the Crossroads (mediator between the genders), sometimes changing the signposts to lead us astray [...] It is perhaps through that rebirth will occur." [21] [22] Esu also appears in Fani-Kayode's photography, Nothing to Lose IX. The presence of Esu is understood in the colouring of the mask; using white, red, and black stripes the mask stands as a representation of the deity Esu. Although these colours 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 notion of "primitiveness" that was widely digested by a European audience). [12]

Fani-Kayode's ''Bronze Head'' (1987) shows a cropped figure's black body that reveals his legs and butt as he is about to sit on top of a bronze Ife sculpture. The Ife sculpture is placed on a round platter, stool, or pedestal, and is placed strategically at the center of the picture frame. Typically, the bronze head in the photograph is meant to honor the Ife king. However, in the context of Fani-Kayode's photograph, it satirizes the Yoruba kingship institution. [23] The photograph represents both his exile and homosexuality, two core parts of his world. [17]

In 1988, Fani-Kayode with a number of other 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 exhibit, "Reflections of the Black Experience," at Brixton Artists Collective. [26] A prominent figure in the Black British art scene, [7] Fani-Kayode served as the first chair of Autograph ABP [4] and an active member of the Black Audio Film Collective. [27]

Collections

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

Exhibitions

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

Death

Fani-Kayode died at Coppetts Wood Hospital of a heart attack while recovering from an AIDS-related illness on December 21, 1989. [2] [5] [6] [7] [37] [38] At the time of his death, he was living in Brixton, London, with his partner of six years [25] and frequent collaborator Alex Hirst, [39] [8] who died of AIDS in 1992. [4] [34] Following Hirst's death, researchers have questioned whether the work that Fani-Kayode and Hirst created individually or as a team was accurately attributed to Fani-Kayode, Hirst, or the pair. [27] [40]

Legacy

Fani-Kayode's posthumous project, "Communion" (1995), reflects his complex relationship with the Yoruba religion, a "tranquility of communion with the spiritual world." One of the images in the series, "The Golden Phallus," is of a man with a bird-like mask looking at the viewer, with his penis suspended on a piece of string. The image has been described as an ironic representation of how black masculinity has been burdened by the Western world. [12] In this image (The Golden Phallus), as in Fani-Kayode's Bronze Head, there is a focus on liminality, spirituality, political power, and cultural history—taking ideals seen as 'ancient' (in the display of 'classical' African art) and re-introducing them as a contemporary archetype. [41]

Fani-Kayode challenged the invisibility of "African queerness", or the denial of alternative African sexualities, in both the Western and African worlds. In general, he sought to reshape the ideas of sexuality and gender in his photography, showing that sexuality and gender appear rigid and "fixed" because of cultural and social norms but are actually fluid and subjective. However, he specifically sought to develop queerness in contemporary African art, which required him to address the colonial and Christian legacies that suppressed queerness and constructed harmful notions of black masculinity. In a time when African artists were not being represented, he provocatively approached the issue by addressing and questioning the objectification of black bodies. (charlotte) His homoerotic influences in using the black male body can be interpreted as an expression of idealisation, of desire and being desired, and self-consciousness in response to the black body being reduced to a spectacle. [42] He was able to show the world and those in the art world just how much queer black voices matter. Telling their sides of the story and not just being the subject of someone else's depiction of them.

Not only is Fani-Kayode praised for his conceptual imagery of Africanness and queerness (and African queerness), he is also praised for his ability to fuse racial and sexual politics with religious eroticism and beauty. One critic has also described his work as "neo-romantic," with the idea his images evoke a sense of fleeting beauty. [19]

His work is imbued with subtlety, irony, and political and social comment. He also contributed to the artistic debate surrounding HIV/AIDS. [43]

Publications

Quotes

"My identity has been constructed from my own sense of otherness, whether cultural, racial, or sexual. The three aspects are not separate within me. Photography is the tool by which I feel most confident in expressing myself. It is photography, therefore – Black, African, homosexual photography – which I must use not just as an instrument, but as a weapon if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and, indeed, my existence on my own terms." [46]

"On three counts I am an outsider: 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." [21]

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

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

References

  1. ↑ "Rotimi Fani-Kayode (In Memoriam)" Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine , Autograph Newsletter, No. 9, December 1989/January 1990.
  2. 1 2 3 Seymour, Tom (March 6, 2020). Resistance, subversion and identity at the heart of Fotofest's first African focus. The Art Newspaper.
  3. 1 2 Rotimi Fani-Kayode Explores the Studio as a Safe Space. Hypebeast.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Rotimi Fani-Kayode - Nominee, 1955 - 1989. Note: Hirst's death is listed as 1994, albeit other sources cite 1992. The Legacy Project.
  5. 1 2 3 Biography: Chief Femi Fani-Kayode
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Rotimi Fani-Kayode. The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Race, Sexuality, Spirituality and the Self: The Photography of Rotimi Fani-Kayode. Autograph.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Quiles, Daniel (February 2020).Rotimi Fani-Kayode Iceberg Projects. Artforum.
  9. 1 2 3 Kelly, Julia (March 3, 2022). Georgetown University Art Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Georgetown University Art Galleries Feature New Exhibitions. Georgetown University.
  10. 1 2 The People Make the Place. Pratt Institute. https://www.pratt.edu/prattfolio/stories/the-people-make-the-place/
  11. ↑ Conversation with the author 1988
  12. 1 2 3 Moffitt (2015). "Rotimi Fani-Kayode's Ecstatic 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. 1 2 Worton, Michael. "Behold the (sick) man." National Healths: Gender, Sexuality, and Health in Cross-cultural Context (2004): 151–165.
  16. ↑ Cotter, Holland (11 May 2012). "Rotimi Fani-Kayode: 'Nothing to Lose': [Review]". New York Times .
  17. 1 2 3 Nelson, Steven (1 January 2005). "Transgressive Transcendence in the Photographs of 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 Times, May 10, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/arts/design/rotimi-fani-kayode-nothing-to-lose.html
  19. 1 2 Kobena, Mercer (1996). "Eros & Diaspora". Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace: 289–293.
  20. ↑ Oguibe, Olu (1999). "Finding a Place: Nigerian Artists in the Contemporary Art World". Art Journal. 58 (2): 35–36. doi:10.1080/00043249.1999.10791937.
  21. 1 2 3 Baker, Charlotte (2009). Expressions of the Body: Representations in African Text and Image. Peter Lang.
  22. ↑ Parsons, Sarah Watson (1999). ""Interpreting Projections, Projecting Interpretations: A Reconsideration of the "Phallus" in Esu Iconography"". Africa Today. 32 (2): 36–91.
  23. ↑ Ola, Yomi. (2013). Satires of power in Yoruba visual culture. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. p. 191. ISBN   978-1-61163-037-4. OCLC   786273719.
  24. ↑ "Autograph Sees Light of Day" Archived 8 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine , Autograph.
  25. 1 2 3 4 W. IAN BOURLAND ON THE LEGACY OF ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE. Duke University Press.
  26. ↑ Reflections of the Black Experience – 10 Black Photographers.
  27. 1 2 GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture.
  28. ↑ "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.
  29. ↑ "Recordings:A Select Bibliography of Contemporary African,Afro-Caribbean and Asian British Art" (PDF). Retrieved 25 January 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. March 3, 2016. The New Yorker.
  33. ↑ African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, FotoFest Biennial 2020. FotoFest.
  34. 1 2 Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion. Wexner Center for the Arts.
  35. ↑ Hopkins, Zoe (October 27, 2024). Two Lenses, One Language. New York Times.
  36. ↑ "Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility Of Communion". The Polygon Gallery. 9 January 2025. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  37. ↑ "Rotimi Fani Kayode – Photo | Revue Noire". www.revuenoire.com. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  38. ↑ Bourland, W. I. (2019). NIGHT MOVES. In Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s (pp. 209–249). Duke University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpm2v.10
  39. ↑ Alex Hirst
  40. ↑ Bourland, W. I. (2019). THE 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
  41. ↑ 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.
  42. ↑ Enwezor, Okwui (2008). "The Postcolonial Constellation". Antinomies of Art and Culture. pp. 207–234. doi:10.1215/9780822389330-015. ISBN   978-0-8223-4186-4.
  43. ↑ Jean Marc Patras/ Galerie.
  44. ↑ 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
  45. ↑ Extract. Revue Noire.
  46. ↑ "Traces of Ecstasy", Ten-8, no. 28, 1988.
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