Born: 1963 Huddersfield, England
Biography
Photographer, scholar, archival curator, radical queer, visual and sex activist Ajamu X was born in Huddersfield, England in 1963 to Jamaican immigrant parents. Coming out as gay in his late teens, he describes his parents’ reaction as ‘impressively progressive for the times’ (Ajamu X, Attitude Magazine, 21 April 2021). He studied Black History and photography in Leeds where, with two friends, he founded the magazine BLAC, an acronym for Black Liberation Activist Core. In October 1987, after seeing it advertised in the Caribbean Times newspaper, Ajamu attended the first, and only, National Black Gay Men's Conference held at the Black Lesbian and Gay Centre in Camden, moving to London in January the following year. He adopted the name Ajamu, meaning ‘he who fights for what he believes’, in 1991, subsequently adding the ‘X’ in tribute to Malcolm X who, in the artist’s words, ‘was my first key role model’ (Ajamu X, Outspoken Arts website). Since the 1980s, he has sought to use sensuality and desire as methods to play with fixed notions of the self and bounded understandings of the body. ‘If people come and think Ajamu’s work is simply about identity and representation,’ he reflects, ‘then they haven’t engaged with it.’ He elaborates, ‘The work of Black and brown artists often gets locked down into a discussion of social and cultural identity.’ The artist uses sensation and sex to bypass these conversations, drawing on the history and process of photography to explore ‘what I want to do and what I want to have done to my Black body’ (Ajamu X, Ajamu on the Pleasures of the Darkroom, Frieze Magazine, 2021).
As a ‘sex activist’ Ajamu has run ‘sex parties for men who want to have sex with men’ since the 1990s, and same-sex desire and pleasure are recurring themes in his photography. He held his first major exhibition Black Bodyscapes in 1994 which focused on the private sexual realities of black gay men. The following year he was the subject of Topher Campbell's first film The Homecoming: A Short Film about Ajamu. In 2000 Ajamu and Campbell co-founded rukus! Federation, an ‘arts company dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the best in challenging, provocative works by black lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gender artists nationally and internationally’. In 2008 he co-curated Outside Edge: a journey through Black lesbian and gay history at the Museum of Docklands. In 2010 the rukus! Black Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Cultural Archive was deposited at London Metropolitan Archives. In 2014 Ajamu’s work featured in Fierce: Portraits of Young Black Queers, 24 portraits of a ‘new generation of Black and proudly out young, emerging and established talent’ at Guildhall Art Gallery (Guildhall Art Gallery). In 2016 he was included in I am for You Can Enjoy with Khalil West at Contact Theatre, Manchester, which used photography and video to explore the lives of queer Black male sex workers and their clients.
In 2020 Ajamu was at the heart of Channel 4’s Me and my Penis documentary. In 2021 Ajamu: Archival Sensoria was held at Cubitt Gallery, London. Drawing on Ajamu’s personal archive, collected over a 30-year career, as well as previously unexhibited contact sheets, personal photos, and community documentation, the exhibition celebrated Black queer life and was a visual tribute to the generative creativity of LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming lives. In a newly commissioned body of work, a series of 22 portraits, taken with the theme of reverence in mind, Ajamu documents an intergenerational group who have each contributed to a robust and vibrant Black queer lineage in contemporary Britain, including artists, photographers, DJs, activists, campaigners, writers, and thinkers. Ajamu reflects, ‘Far too often our work is framed within the context of a deficit paradigm and an oppression based narrative. While we should not lose sight of social justice inequalities, of racism, homophobia, transphobia [...] It is important that we also celebrate the work of younger artists, welcome new conversations and dialogues, and develop affirming spaces through our work. For 30 years my work has been driven by a desire to show Black Queer lives as we truly are: with passion, with intimacy, with sex, with desire, with love and with community’ (Ajamu X, Archival Sensoria, Cubitt website).
Ajamu is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art (due for completion in 2023) and is co-chair of Centred, an LGBTQ community organisation in Soho, London. He is also working on producing a limited-edition fine art photobook, Ajamu: Archive which ‘unapologetically celebrates Black British queer bodies, desire, pleasure as activism, and difference’ (Isaac Huxtable, Ajamu X is Tired of Waiting, 1854 Photography, 25 February 2021), explaining that, ‘My mantra, my punk politics are all in this book. I need to get it done, if I want it done right’ (Isaac Huxtable, 1854 Photography). In late 2021 Ajamu's work featured in Between the Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now at Tate Britain. Ajamu X lives and works in London. His work is represented in the UK in the collections of the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow and Autograph ABP, London.
Related books
- Ajamu: Archive (forthcoming)
- David A. Bailey and Alex Farquharson eds., Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now (London: Tate Publishing, 2021)
- Mels Evers and Ajamu X, Q&A: Ajamu (London: Tate Etc., 2021)
- Paul Clinton, Useless Man, in Amrou Al-Kadhi et al., Kiss My Genders (London: Hayward Publishing 2019), pp. 34-39.
- Ajamu X, Topher Vampbell, and Mary Stevens, Love and Lubrication in the Archives, or rukus!: A Black Queer Archive for the United Kingdom, in Patrick Keilty and Rebecca Dean eds., Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader (Sacramento: Litwin Books, 2013)
- David A. Bailey, ed., Ajamu: Black Bodyscapes (Camerawork, London, 1995)
- Simon Njami, Anthology of African Photography, Edition Revue Noir (1994)
Public collections
Related organisations
- Brixton Artists' Collective (member)
- Centred (co-Chair)
- Royal College of Art (student)
- rukus! Federation (co-founder)
- The Black LGBT Archive Project (Archive Manager)
Related web links
- Ajamu X: Archival Sensoria, Cubitt
- Ajamu X website
- Interview with Ajamu X, Africanah.org, 2016
- Isaac Huxtable, Ajamu X is Tired of Waiting, 1854 Photography, 25 February 2021
- Jason Okundaye, Ajamu X is immortalising Black queer pleasure in print, ID Magazine, 4 February 2021
- rukus website
- The Homecoming: A Short Film about Ajamu, BFI Player
Selected exhibitions
- Between the Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-to Now, Tate Britain (2021)
- Ajamu: Archival Sensoria, Cubitt (2021)
- Kiss My Genders, Hayward Gallery (2019)
- Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generation of Black Creative Pioneers, Somerset House (2019)
- Khalil West and Ajamu: I Am For You Can Enjoy, Contact Theatre, Manchester (2016)
- Through a Queer Lens: Portraits of Jewish LGBTQ People, Jewish Museum (2016)
- Fierce: Portraits of Young Black Queers, Guildhall Art Gallery (2014)
- Fierce: Portraits of Young Black LGBTQ people, Guildhall Art Gallery (2013)
- Future Histories, Street Level Photoworks (2012)
- Queer Self Portraits Now, Fred (2011)
- Familiar Strangers: Portraits by Ajamu X, Gallery of Modern Art (2009)
- Outside Edge: A Journey Through Black British Lesbian and Gay History, Museum of Docklands (2008)
- Hidden Histories, The New Art Gallery (2004)
- Black Bodyscapes, Camerawork (1994)
- From Where I Stand, Brixton Art Gallery (1992)
