‘Desire, spirituality and cultural dislocation’ – photography

The photographer is known as a hugely influential artist in 1980s black British and African contemporary photography, and his work often shows the black male body as a site from which to explore ideas of spiritualty and cultural and sexual difference.

The show marks the 25^th anniversary of Fani-Kayode’s death in 1989 at the age of just 34.

The photographer termed his style of combining symbols drawn form ancestral rituals and motifs from European and African cultures ‘the technique of ecstacy’, the gallery tells us.

‘Hence Fani-Kayode uses the medium of photography not only to question issues of sexuality and homoerotic desire, but also to address themes of diaspora and belonging, and the tensions between his homosexuality and his Yoruba upbringing’, says Tiwani Contemporary.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode  runs from 19 September – 1 November at Tiwani Contemporary gallery, 16 Little Portland Street, London W1W 8BP