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Indepth Arts News:
"Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Ike Ude"
2001-02-24 until 2001-03-24
OBORO
Montreal, QC,
CA
From his provocative Cover Girl series featuring photographic
portraits of himself on the cover of popular magazines to his
writing on sexuality and identity, the work of Nigerian-born Ike
Ude explores a world of duality: African/postnationalist,
photography/performance artist, artist/spectator, male/female,
mainstream/marginal, seduction/narcissism, and fashion/art.
The mid-career retrospective brings together close to two
hundred works from the 1990s. The exhibition maps out the
artist’s significant shift in medium from painting to photography
which includes the use of self-portrait and engages with the
growing relationship of art and fashion. The exhibition situates
the work of the artist within a global contemporary art context,
avoiding the label of African art that often accompanies
exhibitions of contemporary African artists.
The substantial publication available includes an interview
between Okwui Enwezor and the artist, along with essays by
Aimée Bessire, Lauri Firstenberg, Kobena Mercer, Valerie
Steele and Iké Udé.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Iké Udé is an artist, esthete, writer, and publisher
of New York-based aRUDE magazine. After studying in Nigeria and
theUnited States, Udé started his artistic career as a painter in the late
1980s. In the early 1990s, he began using photography to explore and
deconstruct issues of representation and identity. His research engages
him to use different forms of mass communication including magazines,
video, film, and television. He is working on his first feature The Exquisites,
as well as an experimental dance/fashion/multimedia film. Udé was
included in numerous exhibitions around the world most notably IN/SIGHT:
African Photographers, 1940-Present, 1996, organized by a team
including Okwui Enwezor for the Guggenheim Museum, New York and the
Johannesburg Second Biennial, 1997. Udé lives and works in New York.
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