Iké Udé: Nollywood Portraits
Opens February 5, 2022
Nollywood, Nigeria’s 3-billion-dollar film industry, is populated with savvy stars, directors, and producers. Artist Iké Udé returned to Lagos, Nigeria, in October 2014, after three decades away, to photograph its celebrities. In this exhibition, Udé’s portraits appear for the first time with garments and other items used in their creation to make a glamorous, bold statement about African identity at a time when the vestiges of colonialism and widespread racism continue to threaten Black lives on a daily basis. Each portrait conveys radical beauty by reclaiming, reconstructing, and redefining notions of African identity.
