LAGOS, Nigeria — Charly Boy decided he would wear rouge. It was the 1970s, the height of the sexual revolution in the West, so it wasn’t unusual for men to be seen in makeup.

But for a young student in the United States coming from a small town in Nigeria, dressing in ways that drew attention to himself — painting his cheeks and lips in bright colors, lining his eyebrows in kohl, wearing studded leather, acrylic talons and plastic fangs — felt like an act of defiance.

“Sometimes I would release pictures of me sleeping in a coffin and tell people I like to suck blood,” said Charly Boy, a former musician and television personality, now 67. He returned to Nigeria in the ’80s, at which point his appearance became a deliberately provocative performance.

The country was going through a series of military juntas in which cultural and artistic expression were suppressed and heavily policed, and Charly Boy wanted to make himself seen and heard. Consequently, his music and videos were often censored.