Fakir Musafar

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 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, In 1977, he gave himself the name Fakir Musafar. and in 1991, he appeared in My Father Is Coming as Fakir. He was featured in the 1989 book Modern Primitives, which focused on body modification topics such as human branding, suspension, contortionism, binding, and modern piercing culture. He led "Fakir Intensives" training workshops on these topics in San Francisco.

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 Facebook post by his wife Cléo Dubois, and later confirmed by an obituary in Artforum. including modern primitive "adornment," with many adherents of modern primitivism believing criticisms of this movement are based largely on the views of Roland Loomis rather than the culture as a whole.

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 reads "Body is the door to Spirit".

He is the subject of the documentary A Body to Live In, directed by Angelo Madsen.