Artist of the Crossroads

Molly Wagener African Art History 113

Figure 1- Dan Mask, 1989. Gelatin Silver Print

Figure 2- Bronze Head, 1987 Gelatin Silver Print

Figure 3- Gelede Masqueraders

For the artist Rotimi Fani-Kayode, and many other artists of the African diaspora, exile and cross-culturalism is influential to their works. In his late childhood, Fani-Kayode and his family were forced to flee Nigeria to escape civil war. 1 He spent his teenage years coming of age in England, and later attended Georgetown University and Pratt Institute in the United States.2 Returning to England after his studies, Fani-Kayode became a living representation of the transgressive, African diasporic triangulation between Africa, Europe and the United States. His

Olu Oguibe,"Finding a Place: Nigerian Artists in the Contemporary World." Art Journal 58 (1999): 35.
1 2

Oguibe, 35.

piece Dan Mask 3 is concerned not with finding or defining identity, but rather questions the politics of identity. Using the powerful, erotisized, and pan-Africanized male figure as a platform for the dan mask, his piece becomes a crossroads of gender and racial identity. Simultaneously, it actively questions the ways in which the Western imaginary perceives Africa and the diaspora. Dan Mask, is representative of the quintessential black self portrait of the seventies and eighties.4 During this period, which cultural theorist and sociologist Stuart Hall describes as the second moment in the history of the visual arts within the African diaspora, portraiture became an important means of transcending the stereotypical barriers felt by race. 5 Within colonial Africa, the photograph to this point had been largely used in a documentary style. In this way, Kayodes work represented an important digression within a western medium, originally used to create degrading ethnographic portraiture. Fani-Kayode says, My reality is not the same as that which is often presented to us in western photographs.6 This distinction between the colonial photograph of the past, and the post-colonial photograph of the present became essential to Fani-Kayode. In his work, the black figure is strategically posed in the foreground of the photograph creating a dynamic focal point using the black body within the image.7 Dan Mask features a nude black male, whose body encapsulates the sexualized male form. Hall describes the usage of the black body as a means to bring into question stereotypes of race and sexuality,

Figure 1: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Dan Mask. (England: 1989) from the Krannert Art Museum, Illinois International Review, Photograph, http://ilint.illinois.edu
4

Stuart Hall, "Black Diaspora Artists in Britain: Three 'Moments' in Post-war History." History Workshop Journal 61 (2006): 19.
5 6

Hall, 20.

Fani-Kayode, Rotimi, Alex Hirst, Mark Sealy, and Jean Loup Pivin, Rotimi Fani-Kayode & Alex Hirst (Paris: Revue Noire, 1996), 6.
7

Hall, 20.

contextualized by diasporic struggles that are allowed to invade and disrupt the mythical inner wholeness of the image.8 Complicating this idea, Fani-Kayodes use of the body allows for an almost orientalist gaze. Fani-Kayode, however, conceals the identity of the man and diverts the gaze upward, a canonical icon of African plasticity, perhaps suggesting how othering by the West limits diasporic identity. Often categorizing himself as an outsider on three levels: sexual orientation, cultural identity, and choice of career, Fani-Kayodes usage of the portrait brings, literally, and metaphorically, to the foreground his question of identity.9 During a time in which much work was being produced questioning racial identity, questions of sexual identity within the racial realm were less addressed. Fani-Kayode symbolically uses the male figure in his body of work. Deeply imbedded within his sense of identity is his sexual identity. Homoerotic imagery pervades much of his work. Often including icons of African identity such as the dan mask in Dan Mask, and the oba head Bronze Head10, Fani-Kayode addresses his diasporic identity within the context of gender politics. Dan Mask is a black and white photograph in which the subject, the black male form, becomes almost a sculptural altar on which the dan mask is presente6d to the viewer. The figuration within the image emphasizes the sexualized form of the black male body. Muscular bent arms pull the viewer inward to the focal point of the piece, where the mans hands, face and the dan mask intersect. The mans face is symbolically concealed, not by the mask itself, but rather by the faces upward pose and a mass of dark dreadlocks.
8 9

Hall, 20.

Steven Nelson, "Transgressive Transcendence in the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode," Art Journal 64 (2005): 5. Figure 2: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Bronze Head. (England: 1987), from the Arts Council of England, Autograph Shop, Photograph, http://www.autograph-abp-shop.co.uk
10

In the 1970s, a new interpretation of the diaspora arose. In this moment, there was a trend within the diaspora, which departed from the previous intention of gaining equality among the white, to a sense of Black Nationalism and pan-Africanism. 11 This emphasis on black identity as an independent race led to a contemporary rebirth, so to speak, of Africa within the diaspora. Culturally African markers such as dreadlocks, afros and kente cloth became prevalent in the diaspora as the pan-African influence grew.12 Fani-Kayodes usage of dreadlocks concealing the face in his piece creates a disruption in the pan-African identity. The body therefore becomes a mask itself, questioning the very idea of revealing ones self-identity.13 As a result, the dan mask in his piece is transfigured from an object used to mask ones identity, into a face itself. This idea of the mask as a transformative object is prevalent in many African masquerades.14 During the Gelede masquerade15, for example, the wearer of the mask literally becomes transformed into someone else. Fani-Kayode explains that, in traditional African Art, the mask does not represent material reality: rather, the artist strives to approach a spiritual reality.16 His use of the mask in his work is interesting in that the mask is presented to the viewer accompanied by traditional African markers such as the dreadlocks, but it is also shown statically as the focal point. This plays with the issues of masks, and African artifacts in general, how they are exhibited in museums.

11 12 13 14 15 16

Hall, 16. Hall, 17. Nelson, 18. Paul Wingert, "African Masks: Structure, Expression, Style," African Arts 6 (1973): 1. Figure 3. Nelson, 10.

African masks, as they are presented in the museum setting, can be seen on only the physical level. Due to this static re-representation, the object loses an important part of its cultural character. It is transformed from an object once very much alive as it was masqueraded, into a simply physical and dead, purely sculptural piece. Fani-Kayodes piece therefore, using the black body as a means of presenting this static object, becomes the intersection of the contextually confused. The body literally becomes the platform on which the fetishized, misunderstood, and misrepresented African object is presented to a culturally unaware viewer in a way which severs the object from its original intent. In this way, Dan Mask becomes a juxtaposition of the varying attempts by diaspora artists to break through the western barrier. It features an Africanized male figure, in contrast with the contemporary westernized representation of African arts. In both instances the forms lose essential aspects of their identity. Dan Mask therefore is concerned with the diasporas fixation on identity, and the methods by which identity is found or lost. The artist interprets a powerful, eroticized, pan-Africanized male figure throughout his art. His works, which are commonly considered homoerotic by critics, often utilize objects of African culture, specifically of Yoruba origin.17 Fani-Kayode was raised in Yoruba by his parents who were high ranking chiefs called, Keepers of the Shrine.18 This influence permeates his body of work which aims to utilize the Yoruba priest technique of ecstasy. 19 During technique of ecstasy, the Yoruba priest is put into a trance which enables communication with the higher

17 18

Nelson, 6.

Gen Doy, Black Visual Culture: Modernity and Post-Modernity, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 157.
19

Doy, 157.

deity.20 Fani-Kayode sees this as essential to his role as an artist saying, As an African working in a western medium, I try to bring out the spiritual dimension in my pictures so that concepts of reality become ambiguous and are opened to reinterpretation.21 He wants his works to activate the viewers subconscious similar to the technique of ecstasy. Rotimi Fani-Kayodes Dan Mask is a complex piece which captures and brings into speculation identity politics as well as the western perception of Africa. Through his usage of the masculine black body as a figural and metaphoric tableau for the dan mask, Fani-Kayode communicates the connection between the Africa and the diaspora, but also the disconnect. Dan Mask therefore is concerned with the diasporas fixation on identity, and the methods by which identity is found or lost. His artwork investigates the views of African culture and mysticism through the masculine black body in contrast to a static tribal mask. Much like Esu, the Yoruba deity of the cross-roads and messenger between the physical and spiritual world, Rotimi FaniKayodes Dan Mask seeks to facilitate a deeper understanding of the connection between Africa, the diaspora, and the West.

20 21

Nelson, 10. Fani-Kayode, Hirst, Sealy, and Pivin, 6.