It was a gathering of arts connoisseurs, Nollywood stars and corporate gurus when Alliance Française, Mike Adenuga Centre, on Osborne Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, hosted an exclusive preview of Nollywood Portraits: A Radical Beauty, a solo photography exhibition by a New York-based Nigerian photographer, Iké Udé. The exhibition, which will run till Sunday, June 16 , was attended by guests such as Executive Director Globacom Mrs. Bella Adenuga Disu; Curator SMO, Mrs Sandra Mbanefo-Obiago; Project Manager Nollywood Portraits, Osahon Akpata; actors Sadiq Daba, Ozzy Agu, Uti Nwachukwu and Eku Edewor, among others. There were also several filmmakers in attendance. They included Mahmood Ali-Balogun, Tope Oshin Ogun and Charles Novia.
The exhibition, which was curated by African Artists Foundation (AAF), and sponsored by Ford Foundation, is showcasing 64 enthralling portraits of members of Nigeria’s vibrant movie scene, Nollywood. In the portraits, which are full length and captured in uniquely elegantly style, Ude’ orchestrated a histrionic filmic atmosphere of light and colour, whereby the industry’s illustrious veterans, in company with the next generation of emerging talent, pose in classically staged shots. Pictographic depiction include a cross-section of industry personalities, such veterans as Olu Jacobs, Sadiq Daba, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Genevieve Nnaji, Stephanie Okereke Linus, as well as Kunle Afolayan and rising stars such as Alexx Ekubo, Enyinna Nwigwe, Linda Ejiofor, Kehinde Bankole and several others.
Explaining the distinctiveness of his style, Ude said it came from his background as a painter. “I was formerly a painter; hence, my photographs employ a painterly language and longer-time process in the making of the pictures.” The “making-ness” of the picture is the definitive word because the portraits that emerge are no longer just pictures showing a moment of time captured by exposed film; they become works of art realised over periods of time.
“The whole exhibition is in colour. There are 64 individual portraits and one grand group portrait of all the subjects which I named: “The School of Nollywood” a reference to and departure from Rafael’s 1509 fresco, The School of Athens, which can be seen at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The painting is of a grandiose architectural framework, depicting prominent philosophers of Greek antiquity, posed in a manner whereby they dominate, but do not crowd their environment,” he said.
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Ude described Nollywood as the Nigerian and African mirror par excellence while revealing his immeasurable admiration for members of the industry because of their industriousness, tenacity, can-do-attitude, cleverness, confidence, swag, etc.
With these portraitures, Udé seeks to complement the discourse on the representation of Africans in cinema, from colonial domination and inferior stereotypes to one of intellect and creative agency in telling our own stories.
Speaking of what makes a photograph memorable, Ude said: “The style, the how (composition, form, lighting, colour) and other precious, unquantifiable intangible poetics. I think that emphasis on political or socio-political content of a picture becomes irrelevant once the topical issues of the picture fades or are forgotten with the passage of time. But an exquisitely and imaginatively, well composed picture is invariably timeless in its appeal, regardless of when or where it was made”.
Udé is an aesthete, dandy, writer and founder of the seminal art fashion print magazine aRUDE, 1995-2009. In addition to the accompanying coffee table book, Nollywood Portraits: A Radical Beauty published by Skira in 2016, he is also the author of Style Files: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed, published by Harper Collins in 2008 and Beyond Decorum published by M.I.T Press in 2000. Vanity Fair included him in the magazine’s International Best Dressed List in 20092012 and 2015.
He has been described as a master portraitist along with Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn and Andy Warhol and has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and has been reviewed in a number of publications including Art in America, The New Yorker, Art Daily, L’UOMO Vogue, Flash Art, and The New York Times. His articles on fashion and art have been published in magazines and newspapers worldwide.
Throughout his innovative career, Udé’s works have been exhibited at Leila Heller Gallery, New York (2013), the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence (2013), the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis (2014), the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (2014), the Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs (2015), and the National Academy Museum and School, New York (2015), amongst others. Udé’s work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Museum, Washington D.C., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum of Art and Design (MAD), New York, the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence, RI. He currently lives and works in New York
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