Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Nothing to Lose at the Walther Collection Project Space.

I was thrilled to see that finally Rotimi Fani-Kayode was getting a proper showing in New York. This tribute to his photographic work is long overdue. Indeed he was seminal in his portraiture of black African homosexuality.

“The first solo exhibition in New York of photographs by the British-Nigerian artist, presents large-scale color and black-and-white portraits created in the late 1980s by Fani-Kayode, before his untimely death in 1989. Fani-Kayode’s images interpret and reveal sexuality across racial and cultural differences, vividly merging his fascination with Yoruba ‘techniques of ecstasy’ and homoerotic self-expression through symbolic gestures, ritualistic poses, and elaborate decoration.”

While Mapplethorpe’s neo-classical photographs of the 1980’s with their emphasis on a perfect timeless body have become by now the acceptable norm in the representation of homosexuality and homoerotic desire as an art form, Rotimi’s enigmatic, theatrical, “neo-romantic” images of the black body engaged in some mysterious ritualistic exercise have encountered a reluctant establishment on this side of the Atlantic in particular. I am reminded of Caravaggio’s depictions of male youth, which were perceived at the time as highly provocative in their rejection of all classical normative rules of representation.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) was born in Nigeria in Ife, the Yoruba spiritual center, to a prominent family who were keepers of the shrine of Ife. Becoming political refugees his family settled in the UK and Rotimi went on to complete his education in the US at Georgetown University and at the Pratt Institute, finally returning to London where he worked until he died of AIDS at the age of 34.

Kobena Mercer in her essay Neo –Romantic, Afro-Atlantic: Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s Aesthetic Singularity describes eloquently his photographic work at the Project Space. .

“ In the luxurious darkness of the photographer’s studio, various young men have been adorned with flowers. Petals and leaves brush against their skin in an atmosphere of sensual calm, yet each figure is visibly agitated by strange gestures whose meaning is inscrutable. “Nothing to Lose” is a series of color photographs that communicates a passionate feeling for human beauty that is all the more vividly intense because of the imminent presence of death. Rotimi Fani–Kayode died in December 1989, having produced in the previous years a unique body of work that remains utterly original.”

This selection of photographs was taken from two bodies of work, Nothing to Lose and Every Moment Counts, which he did in collaboration with his partner Alex Hirst as part of two groups shows that dealt with the impact of AIDS (Bodies of Experience: Stories About Living with HIV and Ecstatic Antibodies).  Fani-Kayode embraced the subject fearlessly and without self-pity.

Leaving behind the more typical realistic documentary photographic tradition Fani-Kayode embraced at once the Yoruba ritual heritage and his sexual identity and turned to the more adaptive studio tradition with its potential for creating imaginary spaces. These images are mostly provocative not because of an overt sexuality, but more because in depicting a black male nude engaged in enigmatic rituals they become windows into the unknown: an intangible spiritual world where mysterious forces are at play and where spiritual and physical ecstasy merge provocatively.

These images are confounding. There is no obvious point of entry in Fani-Kayode’s fabricated world. While I feel drawn in by the theatricality of the composition, the rich and sensuous coloring, dramatic lighting and luscious flowers, leaves and feathers, I am unable to access the meaning. I feel ultimately kept at a distance.  Fani-Kayode deliberately aims to create a complexity in order to hold the viewer at bay. I am reminded of the tradition of the Yoruba masquerade rituals where the spirits of the ancestors are brought forth through the presence of masks and yet, at all time, are shielded from view. One does not enter their world.

A more comprehensive analysis that would take in account Yoruba rituals might give further helpful insight into the meaning of these images.