UDÉ, IKÉ

Iké Udé

Nigerian-American, b. 1964

Sartorial Anarchy #6, 2013
Archival Pigment Print
18 x 23 inch image on 20 x 25 inch paper
Signed Edition of 30

Nigerian-born artist Iké Udé works between photography and performance art in his ongoing series of self-portraits, "Sartorial Anarchy." Exploring the multiple personae that one can adopt, Udé plays with theatricality, fashion, and notions of celebrity in his portraiture, revealing identity to be both cultural construct and individual creation. Through overt self-styling that combines historical and contemporary fashion, he explores the ambiguities of gender, sexual, and cultural representations within the art world. The haute couture feeling of Udé’s work is achieved through the elaborate construction of props, costume, pose, painted backdrops and post-production.

Udé’s work is in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Smithsonian Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts and RISD Museum, among others. His works are in many private collections and have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. In 2016, Iké Udé’s Nollywood Portraits: A Radical Beauty premiered at the MoCP.