Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Ike Ude. - Review - book review

Black Issues Book Review, Sept, 2000 by Regina Woods

Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Ike Ude MIT Press, March 2000, $25.00, ISBN 0-262-52280-2

In his photographs, Nigerian-born artist Ike Ude examines issues of race, gender and sexuality, subverting the viewer's expectations of the same on a visual and theoretical level. Using fashion and popular magazines as the principal media for articulating his ideas, Ude attempts to shake loose our notions of what constitutes masculine and feminine. The artist uses our fixation on mass media, particularly in his Cover Girl series, to call attention to the ways in which gender is defined by the clothing of the wearer and the perceived race, by actual biology. In addition to Cover Girl, the catalog documents several of Ude's artistic projects, including his most recent series, "Beyond Decorum," as well as "Celluloid Frames," and "Uses of Evidence and Samson and Delilah." The catalog also includes reproductions of several covers of aRUDE, Ude's culture and style magazine.

Beyond Decorum is particularly useful as an introduction to issues of gender and sexuality as informed by race and culture--points raised repeatedly in the insightful essays by cultural critics, curators and art historians. Contributors discuss Ude's interest in media and consumerist culture, the political implications of fashion, and the trangressions that can occur in our wardrobe choices. Lauri Firstenberg situates Ude's work against the idea of identity politics as well as within cultural theoretical discourse.

The book also contains an interview with the artist, by the writer and curator Okwui Enwezor, in which they discuss Nigerian traditions of masking as related to identity. Enwezor and Ude discuss Ude's work within contemporary African culture and photographic practices at length.

Beyond Decorum is a bold and courageous statement about gender and race in twenty-first century culture. Issues and concepts that once were assumed to be static take on the fluidity of modern-day representation and become, through Ude's eyes, as changeable as a fifteen second commercial.