The exhibition Style & Sympathies features a selection of self-portraits from New York-based, Nigerian-born artist Iké Udé’s critically acclaimed Sartorial Anarchy series. Udé’s distinctive portraits, which poeticize colors, sumptuous fabrics, and composition, transcend the traditional aesthetic of portraiture by adopting a post-modern twist. The portraits show a highly stylized world of color and improvisational virtuosity, in which the artist employs men’s fashion ensembles that have been culled from various historical times and geographies.

At once a reference to and departure from Dandyism, Udé’s Sartorial Anarchy series is essentially post-dandyism in its conceptual use of fashion/costume as an index of culture. Udé has been engaged with this body of work since 2010, when the first photographs of this series were presented in the exhibition The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York. Most recently, Udé has continued his Sartorial Anarchy series for the exhibition Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum.

Udé’s works have been placed in the permanent collections of various significant institutions and collections such as the Smithsonian National Museum, Washington D.C., The Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum and the Museum of Art and Design, New York.

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