Michael Oyinbokure: Review by Anthony Fawcett

Michael Oyinbokure’s latest series of photographs is entitled Masqueradism, an all-enveloping nom-de-plume and umbrella for his visually stunning but disturbing work. Masquerade is originally a French word derived from the Italian maschera, or mask. We all know the masked balls of Venice, where you can be disguised or passed off as someone else, and pretend to be someone one is not. Dissimulation ……. play acting …… make believe.

Oyinbokure’s oeuvre is very sculptural, and his model/muse has such gravitas, as in, for instance, The Language of the Body (Medium: Photography). The costumes, clothes in this work, and the others in the series are slightly animalistic, ‘Yeti-like’ and genuinely disturbing. But this is surely the point?

Michael Oyinbokure’s work resonates for me with that of the Ghanaian filmmaker John Akomfrah, whose installation I saw at last year’s Venice Biennale where he was representing Britain in the British Pavilion.

Akomfrah’s films interrogate issues around migration, identity, colonialism, and collective memory — a high point being his Auto Da Fé (2016), which translates as ‘Acts of Faith!

I am also reminded of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s painting Morning Toilette (1914):

“However precisely he tries to capture her, she first eludes his gaze, then ours. Usually Ida appears in his work like a dream on the brink of fading, a memory, even though they shared a close daily life.”
(Florian Illies, Ursula, Fall/Winter 2024.)

I think Vivienne Westwood, with her inspired collections and her activism, would have been intrigued by Oyinbokure’s photographs. She frequently quoted the philosopher Bertrand Russell — “Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence.”Compare Vivienne’s Orange Sheepskin Short-Sleeved Bolero from the Erotic Zones Collection (Spring/Summer 1995) to Oyinbokure’s A.I.-generated shaggy body-enveloping creations!

Oyinbokure has eloquently explained:

“I work through the visual form of Masqueradism, a reimagined eurythmic art using photography, gesture, and cultural symbolism to express stories often untold ……. My work captures the invisible weight of migration and resilience…”

There is a latent anxiety which hovers around this bejewelled Princess lost in a harmony of bodily movement.

“The masked body becomes an archive?” Exactly!

Michael Oyinbokure is a born auteur, and I would be fascinated to see if he develops these themes into films, given that movement and identity are at the crux of his distinguished photography.

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Photography by Michael Onyibokure

Written by Anthony Fawcett