FAHAMU PECOU
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work can be viewed as meditations on contemporary popular culture. I began my career experimenting with practices employed in contemporary branding strategies, particularly as they pertained to hip-hop music. These experiments ultimately led me to question not only the stereotypes that drive consumerism, fame, celebrity-worship etc. but how an unspoken racial and cultural divide often influenced these factors. I appear in my work not in an autobiographical sense, but as an allegory. My character becomes a stand-in to represent black masculinity and both the realities and fantasies projected from and onto black male bodies. I seek to challenge the expectations around black men and, to a larger extent, society in general. Adopting the traits typically associated with black men in hip hop, I extract them from their more popular associations and distort or exaggerate them by appropriating them within a fine art context. The end result is a parody on 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 and live performances. Each medium allows me to articulate various nuances around my themes and further distort the assumptions we tend to make about one another.
Education
1997 B.F.A. Painting/Computer Art, Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA
1995-1996 Independent Study / Painting, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA
Artist in Residence
2010 Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC
2010 The McColl Center, Charlotte, NC
2008 The Caversham Center, Printmaking, Balgowan, South Africa
2004-current Taller Portobelo, Portobelo, Panama
Awards
2009 Artadia Award
2008 Caversham Fellowship, Fulton County Arts Council, Atlanta, GA
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2010 Whirl Trade, The Shooting Gallery, San Francisco, CA
ALL FALLS DOWN, Grambling State University, Grambling, LA
2009 Coming From Where I’m From, Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
Black Presidential, Volta 5, Basel, Switzerland
Black Presidential, Lyons Wier Ortt Gallery, New York, NY
Whirl Trade, Get This Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2008 FAHAMENON, NEXT Chicago, Chicago, IL
Something Like a FAHAMENON, Vaknin Gallery, Atlanta GA
Sitting By The Front Door, MMGalleries, San Francisco, CA
Stunt’d Like My Daddy, Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
2007 Million Dolla Baby, Lyons Wier Ortt, New York, NY
Hustle & Show, Flanders Gallery, Raleigh, NC
Things Done Changed, Vankin, Atlanta, GA
2006 NEOPOP and Circumstance, Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX
NEOPOPular Demand, Michael Martin Galleries, San Francisco, CA
2005 NEOPOP Goes the World, Ty Stokes Gallery, Dallas, TX
2001 Bible Stories, The Gilbert House, Atlanta, GA
1996 Life After Death, Gallery 100, Atlanta, GA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010 The Reflected Gaze, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
2008 I Am a Man, curated by Kevin Powell, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Brooklyn, NY
Bare Walls, No Boundaries, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, Amistad Center, Hartford, CT
Spectrumed, Flanders Gallery, Raleigh, NC, curated by Fahamu Pecou
Modern Art. Modern Lives. Then + Now, Austin Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Taking Possession, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, AK
2005 Arts, Beats & Lyrics, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Como Se Cuenta El Cuento, Sonja Haynes Center, UNC Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
2001 Santuario de los Reyes, Festival Iberoamericana de Teatro de Cadiz, Baluarte de Candelaria, Cadiz, Spain
1997 Precise Significance, Hammonds House Galleries, Atlanta, GA
Talks/Lectures/Programs
2010 Grambling State University, Grambling, LA
SCAD Atlanta, Atlanta, GA
2009 University of Delaware, Newark, Del
Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, Ft. Worth, TX
Visual Arts Network of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa AL
“Fahamu Pecou presents: The 15 Project”, Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, Atlanta, GA
2008 Spelman College, Atlanta GA
Amistad Center, Hartford CT
2007 Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA
