Roland Loomis (August 10, 1930 – August 1, 2018), known professionally as Fakir Musafar, was an American performance artist considered to be one of the founders of the

modern primitive Modern primitives or urban primitives are adherents of an Alternative lifestyle, alternative subculture in Developed country, developed, Western world, Western countries who engage in body modification rituals and practices inspired by the cere ...

movement.

Life

Born Roland Loomis, he claimed at age 4 to have experienced dreams of past lives which, along with his anthropological studies, influenced his interests in body modification. He served in the army during the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

, and was first married for a short time in the 1960s. In 1966 or 1967, he first performed a flesh hook suspension, inspired by his viewing of anthropological works.Vale, V. and Andrea Juno (1989) '' Modern Primitives''. RE/Search, San Francisco. In 1977, he gave himself the name Fakir Musafar. In the 1985 documentary ''Dances Sacred and Profane'', he was shown walking while wearing a device that pressed many small skewers into his upper body, and hanging from a tree by hooks in his chest, in his modified versions of other cultures' sacred ceremonies. He was an extra ('Man in hotel room') in '' Die Jungfrauen Maschine'' (The Virgin Machine) in 1988, and in 1991, he appeared in ''My Father Is Coming'' as Fakir. He was featured in the 1989 book '' Modern Primitives'', which documented, propagated, and became influential in the modern body modification subcultures. In 1990, he married Cléo Dubois. From 1992 until 1999, he published the magazine '' Body Play and Modern Primitives Quarterly'', which focused on body modification topics such as

human branding Human branding or stigmatizing is the process by which a mark, usually a symbol or ornamental pattern, is burned into the skin of a living person, with the intention of the resulting scar making it permanent. This is performed using a hot or Freez ...

, suspension, contortionism, binding, and modern piercing culture. He led "Fakir Intensives" training workshops on these topics in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

Illness and death

In May 2018, Loomis announced on his website that he was suffering from terminal lung cancer. He died on the morning of 1 August 2018. His death was initially announced in a public

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post by his wife Cléo Dubois, and later confirmed by an obituary in '' Artforum''.

Tributes

The Leather Archives and Museum, founded in 1991, once featured an exhibit about Musafar. In 1993, he received the Steve Maidhof Award for National or International Work from the National Leather Association International. In 2019, he was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame, and he is also an inductee of the Society of Janus Hall of Fame. UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library and the Association of Professional Piercers also have large archives of his work in photography, published writings, workshops, and BodyPlay magazines. His memorial bench in Byxbee Park in

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

reads "Body is the door to Spirit".

Bibliography

* Fakir Musafar: ''Spirit + Flesh'', Arena Editions, 2004,

Notes

References

Biography

National Geographic documentary Taboo

External links

Excerpt of interview
- Discusses modern primitives, from RE/Search {{DEFAULTSORT:Musafar, Fakir 1930 births 2018 deaths United States Army personnel of the Korean War American erotic photographers American people of Swedish descent BDSM photographers Body piercers Culture of San Francisco Deaths from lung cancer in California Modern primitive People from Aberdeen, South Dakota