Samuel Fosso

The Tati Series (1997) is one of Fasso’s first performative oeuvre or works, in which he works with color.[18]  Originally the Tati Series was meant to be in black and white as was traditional in West African studio photography, for a brand that invited Fasso and two other photographers. He refused the initial project, making The Tati Series color portraits rather than in black and white.[19] In this 1997 series, Fasso uses bold colors and flamboyant fabrics while dressing up as various cliche personas.[20] The cliche personas consist of the liberated American housewife, the pirate, the famous African chief, or the overly coiffed bourgeois woman.[20] The Tati Series evokes a clash of costumes and cultures in the colonial experience.[20] Its message was about segregation, slavery, and a demand for independence and freedom.[21]

In 1997, Fosso released his work The Chief: He Who Sold Africa To The Colonists, which would quickly become one of his most iconic works. In it he depicts himself as a decorated chief, covered in leopard skins, a plethora of gold necklaces and coral beads tangled around his neck, dense gold bracelets and heavy gold rings around his hands and fingers. In his right hand he holds a thick bouquet of gigantic sunflowers. His feet rest bare on a printed mat with a pair of red leather boots beside them.[22] In the self-portrait Fosso conceptualizes the idea of Africa having been sold through the use of historical caricatures of these authoritative figures who committed the violence of selling their own people and resources for personal gain.[23] Fosso himself confirms this in an interview with Guardian Newspaper correspondent, Jon Henley. He shares that in the photo he portrays himself as all the African chiefs who have sold their Africa to White men. His message being that Africa had her own systems and rulers before the White man arrived, and the portrait is both about the history of the White and Black men in Africa. And although they may try to cover it up, underneath it's still all the same.[24]

In 2008, he unveiled one of his most celebrated works, “African Spirits”.[2] Fosso's theatrical self portraits pay tribute to fourteen political, intellectual, and cultural figures from Pan-African historical movements and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The photographs are made of gelatin silver print mounted on dibond and sized 162.8 by 122 centimeters.[25] Fosso unveiled African Spirits during the election of the first black president, Barack Obama. This was an important landmark in U.S. History, further expanding Fosso's message of black empowerment and the celebration of black history.

Influenced by his Igbo heritage and Igbo performance traditions of masquerade and body art, Fosso utilizes the concept of the “living dead” in African Spirits, the idea that the spirit of those before us remain close to the living.[2]

In an article from African contemporary publisher Revue Noire, editor Simon Njami reflects upon African Spirits, “Fosso has disappeared entirely… The bodies that we see represented are no longer his but those of people he impersonates.”[26] For example, in his portrait of Angela Davis,[27] Fosso is costumed in Davis' iconic afro hairstyle and fashion transforming himself into a 1970s political activist. This concept of theatrical mimicry gives empowerment to the people he embodies and the ideals they stood for.

Fosso was inspired by photographs of Even Arnold and Malcolm X, mimicking their portraits in great detail and transforming into the icons of black history. In his photographs is the recurring theme of storytelling, the performative impersonation of another person or idea. Through storytelling, Fosso is empowering and reclaiming the identity of himself, his subject, and his audience.

Steve Nelson comments on the glamorous and nostalgic theme Fosso adopts after African Independence, the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of Black Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. “African Spirits points to an exploration of Pan-Africanist identity grounded in the political ideals of the 1960s, which stressed a shared politics of struggle for black people worldwide.”[28] Fosso's famous self portraits celebrate and challenge concepts of Pan-African identity.

In 2013, Fosso unveiled his new series, The Emperor of Africa.[29] In this series, Fosso “explores the relationship between Africa and China by recontextualizing icons of Mao Zedong”.[30] Like many other self-portraits in The Emperor of Africa, the self-portrait of Fosso as Mao Zedong is seen as a reflection Mao Zedong's image, as well as a symbol of the economic interests Africa had with China.[31] In Gabriel García Márquez's novel, Autumn of the Patriarch, she describes Fosso's Mao Zedong Portrait as an “ancestral figure and absent dictator” . Fosso not only portrays Mao Zedong as a liberator who is well-admired in Africa, but also as a founder “of a modern imperial behemoth” of China's growing economy and cultural presence that is embraced throughout Africa.[32]