This lecture is a series of theses and propositions on the work of Rotimi Fani-Kayode in relation to the subjunctive form of a potential or future being in his art. The lecture departs from Fani-Kayode’s photograph of Denis Carney and Essex Hemphill (1987) that opens his book Black Male/White Male (1988), as well as Philip (1987-1988) included in the same volume, and examines ideas of birth, death, future creation and future being following the subjunctive form in the thinking of art historian Moyo Okediji. The lecture locates the subjunctive form in Fani-Kayode comparatively with its use in modernist poet Christopher Okigbo. Okigbo’s “the forms were formed after our forming” reveal the same probabilities that appear in Fani-Kayode’s art.
Serubiri Moses is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor in Art History at Hunter College, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Art History at New York University. He has delivered lectures at Williams College, Yale University, University of Pittsburgh, and The New School. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions at museums including MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; and the Hessel Museum, Bard College, NY. He previously held a research fellowship at the University of Bayreuth, and received his MA in Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
