FAHAMU PECOU: GRAVITY
Museum of Contemporary Art Of Georgia, until February 14, 2015
Gravity Project, 2013-2014.
About:
My work seeks to provide a crucial intervention in contemporary representations of Black masculinity. I began my career experimenting with the branding strategies employed in hip-hop music and entertainment. These experiments ultimately led me to question not only the stereotypes engendered by the commodification of hip-hop culture, but more, to consider how the influence of historic and social configurations of race, class and gender impact and inform these representations.
Phoenix, 2014.
I appear in my work not in an autobiographical sense, but as an allegory. My character “Fahamu Pecou is The Shit!” embodies the traits typically associated with black men in hip-hop and juxtaposes them within a fine art context. This character becomes a stand-in to represent the ideals and ideas of black masculinity and both the realities and fantasies projected from and onto black male bodies. Through these works I seek to raise critical questions about the types of images and representations that come to inform the reading and performance of black masculinity. Using parody and satire, my works expose our obsession with celebrity, our exploitation of black masculinity and the divide that racial ignorance and stereotypes perpetuate. These ideas are expressed in paintings, videos, original music and performance-based work with each medium allowing me to articulate various nuances around my themes.
Gravity Project, 2013-2014.
ABOUT GRAV•I•TY
In his first solo museum exhibition, Fahamu Pecou uses the trend of “saggin” (the style which sees young men wearing pants well below their waist) as an allegory to talk about Black male mobility and agency.
The term gravity is used as a double entendre. It refers to both the physical concept of gravity – as in the force that presses matter towards the Earth – as well as the notion of something being grave and serious.
Considering saggin as a politicized fashion statement, Pecou asserts that the trend actually confronts hegemonic readings of acceptability and decency, readings he suggests often alienate and overlook Blackness. By conforming to prevailing ideas of respectability young African American men find their realities, sensibilities, and self-expression diminished, effectively rendering them invisible. Saggin then is an act of resistance and a demand to be seen.
Headrush, 2013-2014.
But saggin is linked to many negative stereotypes making it both metaphorically and physically restrictive. The resulting irony is that in seeking autonomy, wearers of this trend mark themselves with the weight and burden of those stereotypes.
“Grav•i•ty” troubles dominant ideologies around Black masculinity, especially as these ideas often use a vocabulary that images Black manhood in despair and disrepair. As a society, we often give up on Black boys before we’ve ever give them a chance. We meet them with fear and loathing. We limit their potential with tragic statistics about their potential and stories of their impending death. The resulting anxieties tether Black boys – and men – to the weight of their disposition, rendering them ultimately, immobile.
But what if we resisted this idea of gravity? What if we believed in Black boys instead of belittling them? Could they… Would they fly? Could we defy gravity and it’s limitations?
ABOUT:
Real Negus Dont Die Project, 2012.
Fahamu Pecou (b. 1975 in Brooklyn, New York) is an artist/scholar based in Atlanta, Georgia whose works comment on contemporary and hip-hop culture while simultaneously subverting it to include his ideas on fine art. Pecou’s paintings, performance art, and scholarly work addresses concerns around representations of black masculinity in popular culture and how these images impact both the reading and performance of black male masculinity and identity. Pecou’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad and is featured in several private and public collections which include the Nasher Museum of Art (Duke University), The High Museum of Art, and Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries in Atlanta, GA. Additionally his work has been featured in several texts including; DEFINITION: The Art and Design of Hip Hop, an anthology chronicling the impact of hip-hop on visual culture, written by famed graffiti artist and designer Cey Adams, 5 Cities/41 Artists: Artadia O8/09 (Published by ARTADIA, 2011), NOPLACENESS: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape (Published by Possible Futures, 2011) and In the Eye of the Muses: Selections from the Clark Atlanta University Art Collection (Clark Atlanta University, 2012). Currently he is a Ph.D. student in Emory University’s Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA). Pecou maintains an active exhibition schedule as well as public lectures and speaking engagements at colleges and museums nationwide.
