Nollywood Portraits: A Radical Beauty

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Abstract:

The cinema of Nigeria is often referred to as Nollywood, a term coined in the mid-1990s to describe Nigeria’s vibrant, film industry consisting of movies produced in the country but watched all over Africa and largely by Africans in the diaspora.   This book presents a selection of photographic portraits by Iké Udé depicting some of the major Nigerian actors and actresses, television presenters, directors, and producers. With his ongoing photographic self-portraits, Nigerian-born Iké Udé explores a world of dualities: photographer/performance artist, artist/spectator, mainstream/marginal, African/postnationalist, individual/everyman, and fashion/art. As a Nigerian-born, New York–based artist conversant with the world of fashion and celebrity, Udé gives conceptual aspects of performance and representation a new vitality, melding his own theatrical selves and multiple personae with his art.