Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Forest of Metaphor

 

Hales is proud to present, Forest of Metaphor, a solo exhibition of works by Rotimi Fani-Kayode. His third solo exhibition with the gallery will feature black and white photographs from the mid-to-late 1980s, most of which are never-before-seen works. In 2024 and 2025 exhibitions of Fani-Kayode's work included a retrospective at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, USA, which toured to The Polygon Gallery, Vancouver, Canada as well as a significant solo exhibition at Autograph, London.  

   

Fani-Kayode was born in 1955, in Lagos, Nigeria to a prominent Yoruba family before moving to England following the outbreak of civil war. He later studied at Georgetown University and the Pratt Institute in the USA, before settling permanently in London in 1983 where he lived and worked until his untimely death in 1989.   

   

A highly influential figure in the history of art, Fani-Kayode, despite a tragically brief career, produced a complex body of photographic work that explores themes of race, sexuality, spirituality, and the self. At the core of his art is an emphasis on difference and otherness. The status of 'outsider' was one with which Fani-Kayode identified on multiple fronts - from his 'geographic dislocation' to the exclusion he experienced as a result of his sexuality and artistic career - and which motivated him throughout his life.[1] Fani-Kayode's powerful legacy continues to speak to urgent issues concerning identity politics, belonging and desire, and has deeply impacted subsequent generations of contemporary artists and photographers.   

  

The exhibition, Forest of Metaphor, presents Fani-Kayode's monochromatic work made in his home studio in Brixton, South London, where he created some of the most striking works of his career. The studio was his sanctuary, to explore aspects of himself and others with a sense of freedom and intimacy. As his models were friends, neighbors and collaborators from his locale, the studio became a social hub, and the photographs reflect the diversity of Brixton in the 1980s. In staged sculptural black and white photographs of his community, he places Black men at the center of his images, but not exclusively, at times incorporating the nude white figure. Across these works, his acute eye for composition and balance is evident: bodies are carefully positioned within the frame, where gesture and tonal contrast create visual tension and harmony.   

   

Fani-Kayode directed the subjects, sometimes into a tender embrace or into a dynamic pose emphasizing their toned figures. This imagery is drawn from a rich queer history - the contortions of the nude body and the flexing of muscles are reminiscent of earlier physique magazines - yet the photographs remain distinctly his own, shaped by a formal rigor.   

   

Fani-Kayode's photographs are infused with a powerful subjectivity that distinguishes them from the sensationalist images of many of his predecessors and contemporaries. They are the singular contribution of an artist determined to transgress the boundaries imposed both on his life and his art. In his seminal essay "Traces of Ecstasy," Fani-Kayode expressed this by describing his desire to reappropriate the "exploitative mythologising of Black virility" in the work of so much Western art and "to transform them ritualistically into images of our own creation," filled with reciprocal desire.   

   

The exhibition takes its title, Forest of Metaphor, from an essay Metaphysick: every moment counts written by Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst, which describes the complex ambitions of Fani-Kayode's images. [2] His masterfully staged and crafted portraits stand as powerful, yet resolutely ambiguous, visual statements. Pioneering at the time of creation, his oeuvre remains distinct and poignant.   

   

Fani-Kayode has had numerous solo shows since the mid-1980s including Wexner Center for the Arts, OH, USA (2024); The Polygon Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2025); Autograph ABP, London, UK (2024 and 2011); Hales New York (2021 and 2018); Georgetown University Art Galleries, Washington, WA, USA; Syracuse University Art Galleries, NY, USA (2016); Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2014); Harvard University's Hutchins Center, MA, USA (2009); and Riverside Studios, London, UK (1986). He has been featured in major group shows at Museum of Art São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA (2024); Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2023); The Photographer's Gallery, London, UK (2023); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Moma PS1, Queens, NY, USA (2021); Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2021); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2020); Guggenheim Museum, NY, USA (2019) and many more.    

   

Fani-Kayode is represented in numerous public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum NY, USA; Tate, London, UK; Victoria & Albert Museum London, UK; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Krannert Art Museum, IL, USA; Chapman University, CA, USA; Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, UK; Centraal Museum, The Netherlands; Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX, USA; Carnegie Museum of Art, PA, USA; The Hood Museum of Art, NH, USA; Autograph, London, UK; The Walther Collection USA/Germany; and Harvard University's Hutchins Centre MA, USA.   

   

Fani-Kayode served as chair of Autograph, London, an organization which continues to represent, advocate, and preserve his work in their collection. Autograph shares the work of artists who use photography and film to highlight issues of identity, representation, human rights and social justice. Hales are delighted to collaborate with Autograph to present Fani-Kayode's work.   

 

 

   

[1] Fani-Kayode, R. "Traces of Ecstasy," Ten.8 Magazine, No 28: Rage & Desire, 1988  

[2] Fani-Kayode, R. and Hirst, A. (1990) 'Metaphysick: every moment counts'. In: Gupta, S. and Boffin, T. (eds.) Ecstatic Antibodies. London: Rivers Oram Press, p. 84.