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Iké Udé

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Iké Udé
Born1964 (age 59–60)
Lagos, Nigeria
Occupation(s)Photographer, performance artist, author, publisher

Iké Udé (born 1964) is a Nigerian-American photographer, performance artist, author and publisher based in New York City, United States.

Early life and education

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Udé was born in 1964 in Makurdi, Nigeria where he was raised. The eldest son of a wealthy family, he was exposed to photography and portraiture at an early age by dressing up for biweekly family portraits.[1]

As an adolescent, Udé attended the Government Secondary School, Afikpo, a British boarding school in Afikpo Nigeria. He was a habitué of London before he moved to New York[2] in 1981 to study Media Communications at Hunter College, CUNY. He began his art career in the late 1980s with abstract painting and drawing. Since the 1990s, photography has been his primary medium.[3]

Udé is a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria.

Work

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Early work on paper and paintings

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Udé's paintings and drawings are less well known than his photography, though critics and art historians have recognized his early work. The late Henry Geldzhaler said of Udé's paintings and works on paper: "I am touched and amazed at the ways in which he manages to blend invisibly the modernist tradition with his own Nigerian roots. There is never anything forced in the conjunction; air and light seem to be his media."[4]

Cover Girls

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Udé began his Cover Girls series in 1994 which established his place in the contemporary scene. Each photograph imitates the cover of a popular fashion or lifestyle magazines, in which the artist himself is featured as the model.[5] The photographs were consciously stylized, posed, photographed and then paired with type matching that of the respected magazine. At first glance, each photograph appears to be an authentic magazine cover. Udé used the magazine cover as a stage to critique the fetishism of the upper class white model and the effects of popular culture on today's consumerist society. He also used the series to comment on issues such as the absence of blackness in fashion, racial stereotyping, and the misrepresentation of people of color. The series was exhibited in 1994 in the New York City gallery Exit Art.[6]

Uli

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Udé's black and white series of photographs, Uli, references high fashion, and Uli body art and wall motifs from Udé's Igbo heritage.[7]

Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum

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Udé's Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum is a conversation between his alter ego, Visconti, and the celebrity Paris Hilton. The exhibition consisted of several mixed media works, assembled with material from gossip blogs, wallpaper samples, photocopies, mirrors, fashion and lifestyle magazines, and pornography sites. Combined, these pieces illustrate the construction of the Paris Hilton phenomenon, inviting viewers to question what they really know about fame and the aesthetics of cultural decay.[8]

Recent projects

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Sartorial Anarchy

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Udé's portraits, most notably those in Sartorial Anarchy, are a combination of wit and historicism. These works possess a contemporary haute couture vibe,[9] or what New York Times art critic Roberta Smith refers to as "irreverent, cultural polyglot self-portraits".[10] In a review for photographmag.com, Jean Dykstra writes, "As much as identity is a cultural construct, it is also an individual creation, and few people have fashioned a self with as much flourish as Iké Udé."[11] In an interview with Monica Miller, Udé said his purpose for creating Sartorial Anarchy was that "Medium-wise, I saw and felt a great need to push the language of photography forward, not at all satisfied by the prevailing old conservative approach and mentality that still obtains massively. I needed a robust visual vocabulary that is very particular, that I own and is instantly recognizable." Udé believes that despite today's level of globalization, people continue to dress according to their particular culture and lack "global conversation sartorially."[2]

Sartorial Anarchy is at once a reference to and departure from dandyism. Udé's conceptual use of historical and contemporary clothing attempts to catalog culture rather than to merely reflect fashion trends.[12] Udé constructs the costumes, props and his own pose as a still life, which is then photographed by an assistant. Udé paints the backgrounds for each photograph and completes post-production procedures himself.

The series was exhibited in The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York (2010),[13] and in Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (2013).[14] Udé's series was also exhibited at the Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Entitled Style and Sympathies, this exhibit presented a selection of his self-portraits from the series.[15]

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts,[16] the Sheldon Museum of Art,[16] the Rhode Island School of Design Museum,[16] have acquired works from Sartorial Anarchy.

The CHIC Index

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The CHIC Index is an online anthology of Udé's portraits that depict stylish people in New York City.[17] The photos show the range of the individual's signature "looks," and feature, among others, Geoffrey Bradfield, Robert Verdi, Patrick McDonald, Steven Knoll, Somers Farkas and Jean Shafiroff.[17]

Publishing

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aRUDE magazine

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In 1995 Udé created aRUDE magazine, named in homage to the Jamaican rude boys of 1960s London.[2] The magazine is similar to Interview and features conversations with artists, photographers, and designers as well as editorials on fashion, beauty and style. While the magazine began as a print publication, it has been published solely online since 2009.[18]

Style File: The World's Most Elegantly Dressed

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Udé is the author of Style File: The World's Most Elegantly Dressed, published by HarperCollins in 2008. The volume profiles 55 influential arbiters of style.[19] Style File features writings and contributions from Valerie Steel, director and chief curator at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology (F. I. T.), and Harold Koda, the former curator-in-charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The publication provides information on all of the 55 women and men profiled, including John Galliano, Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera, Diane von Furstenberg, Dita Von Teese, and Christian Louboutin.

Publications

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  • Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Iké Udé. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0262522809. Edited by Mark H.C. Bessire and Lauri Firstenberg.
  • Style File: The World's Most Elegantly Dressed. HarperCollins, 2008.
  • Nollywood Portraits: A Radical Beauty. Skira Rizzoli, 2016, ISBN 978-8857232294.

References

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  1. ^ "The Wildness of Clothes, but Not for Fashion" Mary Billard, Iké Udé' The New York Times, October 30, 2013.
  2. ^ a b c Kino, Carol. "Iké Udé at Leila Heller". 1st Dibs. Retrieved 2014-08-13.
  3. ^ Iké Udé's biography by National Museum of African Art
  4. ^ "Regarding Henry" by Julia Szabo, New York Magazine, p.46, 16 January 1995.
  5. ^ Asinugo, Nic (9 April 2010). "~The Jack of All Trades~ Iké Udé". The Naijaholic. Retrieved 2014-08-13.
  6. ^ Udé, Iké (1995). "The Regarded Self". Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. 1995 (Fall/Winter 1995): 17. doi:10.1215/10757163-3-1-17. S2CID 191597273. Archived from the original on 2015-02-05. Retrieved 2014-08-13.
  7. ^ "Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art | Fowler Museum at UCLA". Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  8. ^ Dazed (2009-04-02). "Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum by IKé UDé". Dazed. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  9. ^ Adamson, Glenn (2011-03-01). "Issues & Commentary: Tsunami Africa". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  10. ^ Smith, Roberta (2010-12-02). "Visual Culture Out of Africa". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  11. ^ "Newsletter". Photograph. 2022-06-21. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  12. ^ Lisa and Monica, Anarchists of Style: Iké Udé, Worn Through, March 27th 2012. http://www.wornthrough.com/2012/03/27/anarchists-of-style-ike-ude/
  13. ^ "The Global Africa Project Explores the Impact of African Visual Culture on Contemporary Art, Craft, and Design around the World". madmuseum.org. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  14. ^ Rhode Island School of Design Museum: Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion, April–August, 2013, https://risdmuseum.org/art_design/exhibitions/23_artist_rebel_dandy_men_of_fashion Archived 2017-10-06 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ "re-title.com contemporary art". re-title.com contemporary art. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  16. ^ a b c About the Artist: http://ikeude.com/about-the-artist/
  17. ^ a b Daniel Reynolds, Interview: The Difference Between Fashion And Style With Iké Udé, Editor of the CHIC INDEX, Guest of a Guest, May 16th 2012. http://s1.guestofaguest.net/new-york/interview/interview-the-difference-between-fashion-and-style-with-ike-ude-editor-of-the-chic-index Archived 2015-02-26 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ Udé, Iké. "About". aRude Magazine. aRude Magazine. Retrieved 2014-08-13.
  19. ^ Udé, Iké (October 27, 2008). Style File: The World's Most Elegantly Dressed. Harper Design. ISBN 978-0061464201.
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