Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé

Defining Self-Sufficiency

Defining Self-Sufficiency by Oladélé Ayiboyé Bamgboyé is a self-portrait from a series in which the artist’s body is presented in ways that convey blurred differentiation of a character or persona. This formal preoccupation related to the photographic print, is at the same time important in Bamgboyé’s unease with essentialisms, projections, and fetishisms of the Black male body. The work depicts the artist in androgynous poses, combined with the visual effects of transparent, layered photographs, making for a sexually charged image that excites while consciously denying consumption of the Black body. The artist employs a photographic technique that involves overlaying images through multiple exposures. Multiple exposures heighten the sense of vertigo, non-groundedness, and the defeat of fixed time in the image. Pictured and assembled in a state of unrest, contorted, conveys a state of psychological discomfort, hinting at the media’s exploitation of Black bodies. The artist’s implementation of assemblage and multiple exposure techniques frustrates this potential consumption of the Black body. This work underscores the western preoccupation for fetishism of the so-called “Other”, a desire for the non-Western body, with the different images showing fragments constituting the whole picture, inciting a libidinal drive to know, understand, and consume.