One of his most famous works of art, and what he is best known for, is his "autoportraits" where he takes either himself or other more recognizable people and draws them in a style of popular culture or politics.
He grew up in Afikpo, his ancestral home, until he had to flee to Bangui in the Central African Republic at the age of thirteen in 1972 in the wake of the Nigerian Civil War.
His work was discovered by a collection of African intellectuals and writers including Okwui Enwezor and Iké Udé, bringing Fosso into a more active role in the art community for his adult career.
[5][7][10][13] He has portrayed Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela,[14] Martin Luther King Jr. and other black iconic figures.
[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.
[20] The cliche personas consist of the liberated American housewife, the pirate, the famous African chief, or the overly coiffed bourgeois woman.
[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.
[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.
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.
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.
[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” .
In contrast Fosso's varying costumes are said to show that identity is determined partly as well by things over which humans lack control.