Omenka Magazine Releases 4th Issue

We are pleased to announce the release of our centenary issue, a special edition to commemorate Nigeria’s 100th anniversary.

In this issue…

We feature Ike Udé, artist, writer, publisher/editor of New York-based aRUDE magazine and fashion connoisseur. Udé has graced several covers of high-end fashion magazines and was on Vanity Fair‘s International Best Dressed list in 2009 and 2012. In the early 1990s, he began using photography to explore issues of representation and identity. A recurring element in his work is the interplay of script and image.

Victoria Pass, Assistant Professor of Art History, Department of Art, Salisbury University pens an entertaining and insightful article, Glamorous Rebellion, based on his Sartorial Anarchy series which reveals Udé’s refusal to conform to contemporary codes of fashion he describes as boring and dangerous, because of its tyranny and threat to individualism.

Sartorial Anarchy is descriptive of a society in which all individuals can choose whatever sense of style they desire. Udé is successful in his series by suggesting boundary transgressions, both licit and illicit. He poses in an astonishing array of men’s clothing from various eras and cultures including Nigeria.

In Sartorial Anarchy #31, he is effective in utilizing the Yoruba trousers, worn popularly between the 1940s and 1970s as a metaphor for masculinity and the Nigerian identity…Read more in the print edition.