Fahamu Pecou is an established Black artist whose work has been shown on popular shows like Black-ish and Empire. Personally, I was unfamiliar with the artist and his work 
so I was excited to go and see his exhibit and attend the artist talk in Chelsea last week. In case you don’t read this to the end let it be said it’s totally worth going, so get up and move your butt to the Lyons Wier Gallery – open from Tues – Sat, 11am – 6pm.
The exhibition is called Memory and is about Sankofa (my favorite Adinkra Symbol), about tapping into who you are and defining yourself beyond preconceived notions of Blackness and the African continent: „If you know who you are it is better to move around the world.“
The exhibition combined aspects of the ancient, contemporary and the future. I loved the 3 D printed African masks that were very wakandaesk (is this a word? If not, it is now!). Four large canvases that are center pieces of the exhibit colored in Indigo are Inspired by vintage African magazines from across the continent and the headlines reflect the names of these magazines.
Another aspect I really liked about Fahamu Pecou- who is a Ph.D. candidate in Emory University’s Institute of Liberal Arts – was the intellectual way he talked about his art and the connection to different aspects of Blackness, the Diaspora and History. I left the exhibition and didn’t just feel inspired but also enriched with knowledge.
“Things we as black artists create have never been art for arts sake. In a way our art is not an object but a tool. I want my art to build to connect to be human. In the future historians will tell what happened, artists will tell how it felt!”
Find out more:
- http://www.fahamupecouart.com/
- https://www.instagram.com/fahamupecou/
- http://www.lyonswiergallery.com/
