Rotimi Fani-Kayode

Oluwarotimi Adebiyi Wahab Fani-Kayode (20 April 1955 – 21 December 1989) was a Nigerian-born photographer, who moved to England at the age of 12 to escape the Nigerian Civil War.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in April 1955, as the second child of a prominent Yoruba family (Chief Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode and Chief Mrs. Adia Adunni Fani-Kayode) that moved to Brighton, England, in 1966, after the military coup and the ensuing civil war.

Rotimi went to a number of British private schools for his secondary education, including Brighton College, Seabright College, and Millfield, then moved to the USA in 1976.

He read Fine Arts and Economics at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, for his BA, continued on for his MFA in Fine Arts & Photography at the Pratt Institute, New York City.

While in New York, he became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, who he has claimed as an influence on his work.

Fani-Kayode's mid-1980s portfolio Black Male, White Male intersects his racial and sexual themes with subtle displays of a devotee-deity relationship.

Much of that work expresses an ambiguity that can be associated with Esu, who embodies opposing forces.

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."

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).

The main body of his work was created between 1982 and 1989.

He explored the tensions created by sexuality, race and culture through stylised portraits and compositions.

Fani-Kayode returned to the UK in 1983 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 various other exhibition spaces in London.

An example of such relations between Fani-Kayode's photographs and the Yoruba 'technique of ecstasy" is displayed in his work, Bronze Head (1987). His goal was to communicate with the audience's unconscious mind and to combine Yoruba and Western ideals (specifically Christianity). This practice of fusing aesthetic and religious eroticism compelled the viewer visually and provocatively.

This can be seen in his early work, specifically "Sonponnoi" (1987).

Sonponnoi is one of the most powerful orishas in the Yoruba pantheon; he is the god of smallpox.

As a result of his great power, he induces fear to the point where people are afraid to speak his name, and he becomes an outsider, abiding in the countryside instead of the mainland.

In the image there is a headless black figure, decorated in white and black spots, holding three burning candles on his groin.

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.

In a way, Fani-Kayode identified with this orisha being an outsider, but he extended the symbolic message of the image, speaking to him having condemned sexuality while living in a Western world that clashes with his ancestral religion.

He especially referenced Esu, the messenger and crossroads deity who is often characterised with an erect penis, frequently in his images.

He would engrave an erect penis in many of his images to describe his own fluid experience with sexuality.

Fani-Kayode's fragmented sense of being can be examined in his 1987 Bronze Head .

In the photo, he crops a figure's black body to reveal 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.

The photograph represents both his exile and homosexuality, two core parts of his world.

The cropped body symbolises his fragmented identity, the position references his sexuality and the sculpture symbolises the ancient and lifelong social norms that he's attempting to deconstruct.

He died in hospital of a heart attack while recovering from an AIDS-related illness on 21 December 1989.

At the time of his death, he was living in Brixton, London, with his life partner and collaborator Alex Hirst.

Fani-Kayode admitted to being influenced by Mapplethorpe's earlier work but also pushed the bounds of his own art, exploring sexuality, racism, colonialism and the tensions and conflicts between his homosexuality and his Yoruba upbringing through a series of images in both colour and black and white.

While Rotimi Fani-Kayode claimed Robert Mapplethorpe as an influence on his work, Fani-Kayode works with Baroque themes while Mapplethorpe worked with Classical.

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, an early experience that definitely 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.