The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University presents Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion until January 5, 2025, the first North American survey of the late Nigerian British photographer’s work and archives.
Beginning in the early 1980s, Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955–1989) developed a photographic practice that refused categorization, cutting across cultural codes, gender norms, and artistic traditions. His work reveals a world of heightened sensuality informed by Yoruba cosmology and queer activism.
Born into a prominent Nigerian family, Fani-Kayode emigrated to London in the 1960s, seeking political refuge during civil war. As an art student in the United States, he came to negotiate his outsider status along multiple axes, balancing his family heritage and immigration status alongside his own queer sexuality and exposure to underground subculture. Channeling these multiple facets of his identity into photography, Fani-Kayode generated a remarkable body of images over the course of a career cut tragically short by his death in 1989.
Rotimi Fani-Kayode : Tranquility of Communion
Until January 5, 2025
Wexner Center for the Arts
1871 N High St.
Columbus, OH 43210
www.wexarts.org
