The camera is meant to be a tool of truth, an instrument that captures reality. But it captures something else in Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s work: fantasy.
The Nigerian-born artist lived in Brixton until his early death in his 30s in 1989. In the privacy of his studio, he was able to use the camera to explore ideas of difference, identity and a whole lot of desire. The first images here are full of African masks and twisted, nude anguish: naked bodies contorted and writhing in a cold, bare, unhomely South London flat. They’re images that express the reality of being an outsider in western society, of his Africanness, his queerness, his everythingness rubbing up awkwardly against the strictures of 1980s English life.
The camera gave voice to his frustration, but it also allowed him to express his sexuality, his erotic fantasies. The back wall of this exhibition is a riot of leather and muscles and bulges and pearls and wrestling and total, unbridled desire. They’re beautiful images of beautiful men expressing their deepest urges.
The final wall is almost all portraits of two men – who I’m assuming are Fani-Kayode and his partner Alex Hirst – embracing, carrying, holding each other. A Black man and a white man, allowed to live free, naked, here in the studio if not out in the real world.
Fani-Kayode’s mashing together of Yoruba culture, eroticism and a deep dissatisfaction with society’s injustices is powerful. The camera allowed him to live out his fantasies of a kinder, more accepting and much sexier world. That’s a reality we can all hope for.
