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11/9/2002

Ike Ude

Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp

Nigerian-born Iké Udé has been living in New York City since 1982, but first received critical attention in the mid-1990s as a result of participation in a number of highly acclaimed international exhibitions. This attention was also an acknowledgment of Udés impact on an active circle of New York artists during the 1980s, when his interest in style, fashion, and media led to his founding of the magazine aRude. Treating the magazine as a medium in its own right, Udé played multiple roles in its production.

Udés art insists that, while the arts have played a key role in the politics of visual culture and representation, media and fashion are increasingly defining visual culture. His photography is infused with critical references to fashion and the media, and he investigates fashion photography as a distinct type of performance documentation. His send-ups of stock fashion poses and sexual stereotypes undermine the tenuous balance between perception and reality that fashion features and ads work so hard to achieve.

Beyond Decorum: In the title series "Beyond Decorum" Udé gathers well-worn high heel pumps and men's business shirts with ties and replaces the labels with sexually explicit personal ads. Clothes become both a cultural uniform and a costume. A traditional shirt and tie take on alternative sexual meanings: appearances can be deceiving when conservative dress pumps have a transgendered owner. By combining sexual identities assumed to be on the fringe of society with mainstream clothes Udé questions whether appearance determines thought or behavior.

In "Beyond Decorum" Udé makes sexual desires visible and in the process points to the cultural taboos dividing public and private propriety. He simultaneously normalizes that which is thought to be deviant and uncovers the diversity behind a uniform appearance. Udé is fundamentally interested in presenting complex identities that cannot be easily reconciled with preconceived categories.

"Covergirls" is a series of enlarged color photographs of fabricated magazine covers. At first glance Udé appears to be spoofing Vogue, Cigar Afficionado, and Parenting but the critique is deeper than humor alone. As in the series "Beyond Decorum" Udé creates a visual document for a cultural absence. Here Udé becomes the 'covergirl' gracing the cover of Cigar Afficionado as a black man in dramatic drag make up and on Parenting as a black baby on a walk with his white nanny. While Udés identity changes from cover to cover the monotony of the traditional upper-class white cover model becomes apparent.

The "Covergirl" series recalls many historical influences from Andy Warhol's multi-media, pop art fascination with the creation of celebrity and more recently Cindy Sherman's use of costuming to explore the cultural icons and stereotypes of women. Warhol used repetition and methods of mass-production in his portraits of well-known faces to suggest that public identities were produced rather than natural. And to a similar end Sherman makes her portraits of well-known cultural roles overtly theatrical to unveil the superficiality of these stereotyped personalities.
Udé, however, not only points out the construction of stereotyped cultural identities but also sets out to present the complexity and diversity within and among these culturally defined identities. He does this by presenting identities that straddle several characteristics at once: the confident black man, the privileged upper-class connoisseur, the effeminate transsexual, and the international man with an African family history.

ULI Serie : Even in his most formal and politically subtle series of untitled black and white nudes, the issues of identity are brought to the forefront. Udé uses the conventions of the tradition of nudes in photography and the seduction of a broad tonal range black and white print to highlight skin as the ultimate cultural costume. In Udé's versions of the nude he takes partial body shots and never includes the figure's face to eliminate the possibility that these are portraits of individuals. He draws attention to the color, texture, surface of the skin by painting decorative patterns across the bodies of the figures in a contrasting color. To exaggerate his emphasis on the surface and appearance of the figures' skin some photographs include a light skinned body juxtaposed with a dark skinned one. Nevertheless, the identity, race, culture, and often the gender of the figure is completely ambiguous. Skin, that costume that is considered the most immutable determinant of identity, is rendered as a decorative covering.
by Mitra Abbaspour

FIFTY ONE FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY
ZIRKSTRAAT 20
2000 ANTWERPEN
BELGIUM
T:32-3-2898458
F:32-3-2898459

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