Cover Girl

Maker Udé, Iké (Nigerian-American, b. 1964)

Date1994

MediumInkjet print

Dimensionsoverall: 12 1/4 in x 9 1/2 in

Credit LineGift of the artist

Object number2016:173

About the ArtistIn his ongoing series of self-portrait series titled Sartorial Anarchy, Iké Udé creates elaborate constructions with props, costumes, painted backdrops, and post-production to explore the multiple personae that one can adopt. Udé plays with theatricality, fashion, and notions of celebrity in his portraiture, revealing identity to be both cultural construct and individual creation. Through overt self-styling that combines historical and contemporary fashion, he explores the ambiguities of gender, sexual, and cultural representations.
In his series Cover Girl (1994) Udé fabricates his own portrait onto magazine covers from GQ, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and other high fashion magazines to blur distinctions and subvert the gendered and sexual norms typically embedded in advertising. Often posing in drag or whiteface makeup, these cover photos alongside culturally charged headlines challenge traditionally accepted ideas of race, gender, celebrity, and self-representation.
Similar to his Cover Girl series, his Yellow Book and Savoy series reimagine the covers of two competing literary periodicals, both illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley and published in London during the 1890s. Udé again models himself on the cover, posing as a leading figure within the arts movements of the era. He draws on the symbols of Aestheticism and Decadence as he takes on and transforms the persona of the fin-de-siècle European dandy.
Iké Udé is the author of Style File: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed, published by HarperCollins in 2008. Using intimate interviews and photography, the volume gives insight into 55 arbiters of fashion and style and their views on fashion and culture. He founded aRUDE magazine in 1995, named in homage to the Jamaican rude boys of the 1960s. The magazine features interviews with artists, photographers, and designers, as well as beauty and fashion editorials and his own photographs. A comprehensive publication of Udé’s work, Beyond Decorum, was published by MIT Press in 2000. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Smithsonian Museum of Art, and RISD Museum, among others.