“In every instance, I’ve been so intrigued and riveted by his imagery, his technique, and the palpable sense of compassion and reverence he holds for his sitters,” Ramsey says, reflecting on his various encounters with Fani-Kayode’s photographs.

In collaboration with Autograph and the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH), The Polygon Gallery presents Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion until May 25.

Embracing identities

Curated by Sealy, the exhibit contains four chapters: Theatre, Archive, Museum and Studio. The first features the artist’s last complete works; the second includes the artist’s early and experimental works. The exhibit then showcases black-and-white prints in the Museum section before concluding with what Ramsey refers to as “endnotes of the show”: material that provides visitors a closer look at the photographer, including a sixteen-minute film on the artist.

“At The Polygon Gallery, we’ve shown Rotimi’s work twice in recent memory, in the touring group exhibitions Feast For The Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography in 2021 and As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic in 2023,” Ramsey shares. “Tranquility of Communion is a thrilling opportunity to give this artist’s work the sole focus it deserves.”

The current show, which originated at the Wexner Center, was adapted for the North Vancouver space. One change was spreading the original opening quotations – excerpts taken from Fani-Kayode’s writing– throughout the exhibit. A decision Ramsey sees as giving room for the artist’s voice.

Drawn from Fani-Kayode’s essay “Traces of Ecstasy,” the exhibit’s title reflects the photographer’s attention to spirituality. Ramsey notes that Fani-Kayode (born in 1950s Lagos) came from a well-respected family holding religious nobility as keepers of traditional Yoruba shrines.

“There’s a strong current of rite and ritual running through his work as well as communication with worlds beyond this one,” says Ramsey.

The photographer moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, escaping from the Nigerian civil war; he then studied art in the United States. While touching on various contexts, including experimental photography, Afro-diasporic art and studio portraiture, Fani-Kayode’s photography has also reflected the different parts to his identity as a gay Black man from a religious family with lived experience in the U.S. and U.K.

“Rotimi was very clear on these various facets of himself; he wasn’t confused or conflicted about any of them,” Ramsey says. “Photography gave him a vehicle to synthesise all of this in a very clear, uncompromising way.”

Composing oneself

The first time Ramsey viewed Fani-Kayode’s photographs was during the Feast for the Eyes exhibit. With shadows, lighting, and religious imagery reminding him of Caravaggio paintings, he recalled being drawn to the photographs’ theatrical “sense of play.” A notable work from the current exhibit, for Ramsey, is Every Moment Counts (Ecstatic Antibodies) – created at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

“Rather than showing his peers as sick and vulnerable, he depicts them as powerful and beatific,” Ramsey says. “Even if his ‘ecstatic antibodies’ can’t physically fight disease, they can instill a sense of glory and peace.”

In addition to spirituality, desire, performance and queerness, Ramsey indeed sees mortality as one of the exhibit’s major themes. Fani-Kayode died at the age of thirty-four in 1989 – a turn of events he suggests the artist knew was coming.

“From the subtle ways he titles his late black-and-white work, to his explosion into large colour photographs in ’89, the year of his death, in a series called Nothing to Lose, we see an artist determined to make the very most of the time he had,” Ramsey adds. “That’s a powerful thing.”

The posthumous nature of the exhibit and Fani-Kayode’s untimely death left some of the exhibit’s works untitled and undated. Ramsey notes that, under Sealy’s direction, their team extrapolated photographs’ dates, locations, subjects and the suggested meaning behind certain symbols. Another notable work is Umbrella, a black-and-white print in the Museum section.

“I’m fairly certain that the figure in this photograph, whose face is hidden under an umbrella’s canopy, is the artist himself,” Ramsey adds. “He has some distinctive birth marks, and once you spot them, you might be able to recognize Rotimi in some other photographs, too.”

For more information, see: www.thepolygon.ca/exhibition/rotimi-fani-kayode-tranquility-of-communion