June 29 — August 17, 2013
How to Eat Your Watermelon...
Dr. Fahamu Pecou
Atlanta, Georgia based artist Fahamu Pecou overlays social commentary and hip hop culture onto the world of contemporary art with paintings and drawings that depict Pecou on fictionalized magazine covers and in staged photo shoots. Pecou’s paintings, performance art, and scholarly work addresses concerns around representations of black masculinity in popular culture and how these images impact both black male masculinity and identity.
According to Pecou, "HOW TO EAT YOUR WATERMELON... is a commentary on agency as it pertains to Black identity and comportment. Like the crows that taunt Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow character in the 1978 film adaptation of “The Wiz”, often our own cultural productions are used to influence our very dispossession.”
Fahamu Pecou is an artist and scholar based in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned a B.F.A. from the Atlanta College of Art in 1997 and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Emory University's Institute of Liberal Arts. Since 2005 Fahamu has been featured in several solo and group exhibitions including solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, Art Basel (Basel, Switzerland) and Cape Town, South Africa. His work is included in collections including; the Nasher Museum at Duke University, Paul R. Jones Collection, the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, the Clark Atlanta University Art Collection and Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia.
Artist residencies include; the Caversham Centre in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa and the first-ever Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture Resident at The McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, N.C. He has received several awards and recognitions including an ARTADIA award and the NBAF Interpretations "Emerging Artist Award". This exhibition will mark the fourth solo exhibition for Fahamu Pecou at Conduit Gallery.
Pecou's work is featured in 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).