Untitled, 1988
Produced during a career of only six years, Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s photographs are a radical vision of culture, intimacy, desire and pain. Rotimi Fani-Kayode: The Studio – Staging Desire is at Autograph, London until March 2025. All photographs: Rotimi Fani-Kayode
Untitled, 1989
Fani-Kayode was born into a prominent Yoruba family before moving to England following the 1966 outbreak of civil war in Nigeria. He studied in the USA before settling permanently in London
Untitled, 1988
A leading figure in the Black British art scene, Fani-Kayode’s staged and crafted portraits playfully beckon the viewer to embrace new possibilities of the self
Untitled, 1988
From 1983 until his death in 1989, the artist lived and worked in Brixton, where his studio became a sanctuary visualising Black queer self-expression
Untitled, 1988
This photograph reveals details of the artist’s Brixton studio. The image is not believed to have been printed during Fani-Kayode’s lifetime and was uncovered through research by the Autograph gallery
Untitled, c 1988-1989
Presenting never-before-seen works by Fani-Kayode, the exhibition is the culmination of meticulous research into the artist’s archives held at photography charity Autograph. Alongside his practice as an artist, Fani-Kayode was a founding signatory of Autograph in 1988, and one of its first chairs
Untitled, 1988
The model in this 1988 photograph is the artist Ajamu, a scholar, archive curator and radical sex activist. He recalls his friendship with Fani-Kayode: ‘I was always watching, looking, and listening to him. He gave his time generously.’ You can see more of Ajamu’s work here
Untitled, c 1988-1989
Through photography, Fani-Kayode negotiated his outsider status, balancing his family heritage alongside his own queer sexuality and exposure to underground subcultures
Untitled, c 1988-1989
Fani-Kayode: ‘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’
Untitled, 1988
The studio enabled Fani-Kayode to live, be free, find love and express himself. The photographs he produced during this time emphasise gesture, pose and a sense of longing
Untitled, 1988
His transgressive and radical vision broke through boundaries of art history and Yoruba spirituality
Untitled, 1988
Fani-Kayode: ‘My reality is not the same as that which is often presented to us in western photography. As an African working in a western medium, I try to bring out the spiritual dimensions in my pictures so that concepts of reality become ambiguous and are opened to reinterpretation. This requires what Yoruba priests and artists call a technique of ecstasy’
Untitled, 1988
Fani-Kayode’s photographs treat romantic love with spiritual reverence, translating the emotional intensity of same-sex, multiracial desire into richly evocative symbolic language
Untitled, 1988
Today, Fani-Kayode’s art remains a potent source of inspiration, presciently anticipating contemporary photographic approaches to identity, sexuality and race
