An Invocation
We welcome you into this gallery, into this space,
first acknowledging the land on which it stands,
that of the Cherokee and Shawnee Native peoples,
elders, and ancestors, who call this their homeland.
We acknowledge and pay respect to them and offer
deep gratitude and respect to the land and water
that support us.
We honor our ancestors, known and unknown,
who walk with us still.
We honor our presence and the knowledge we bring into this moment
and make room for what may be revealed.
We come into agreement with the refusal of
spectatorship,
or the allowance of the subject to be consumed by
the viewer,
transforming us into witnesses.
We hold space for these works: embodiments,
performed by Fahamu Pecou and others,
rooted in African cosmology,
safeguarding Black subjectivity,
exploring Afro-Surrealism,
and imagining speculative futures.
Exploring time as cyclical, not linear,
giving space for its generative and regenerative
capacity,
we extend ourselves the right to opacity:
to the works and what we encounter,
to not reduce
but to acknowledge the knowable and unknowable,
honoring our connection
and the resonances that arise.
We honor the legacy of this work,
a RE-membrance—a connection of mind, body,
and spirit.
Asè
The End of Safety
This series of works is an invitation to peel back the layers, to move beyond what W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folks called “the veil”: the second sight that makes us see ourselves through the eyes of the white gaze. Here, the veil becomes a material mask, pulled, stretched, and draped, pressed against the skin, in a choreography that creates a tension between concealment and revelation. As these figures seem to tenderly reckon with their humanity, they resist the pull of being torn asunder.
In this section, Pecou explores the imposition of Blackness on Black people in the United States—how so many of its definitions were never ours. When we enter a room, before we are seen via nationality, via gender, or even as fully human, we are seen as Black. We do not fully create these ideas, yet we inherit their weight, carrying this identity, and others’ definitions of it. Even so, we have reshaped it and found comfort with it, crafting safety within it—showing its beauty, displaying its power, negotiating its worth, and expressing its excellence, often in resistance to those who tried to confine or destroy it through systems rooted in anti-Blackness.
The End of Safety embodies Pecou’s vision of removing this veil and stepping beyond that comfort: imagining the delicate, dangerous, and necessary act of seeing ourselves for the first time, free from the stories that the world imposes, and daring to be whole, pure, and unencumbered, bearing witness to the truth of our existence and the space it claims.
Real Negus Don’t Die
This series of works, begun in 2013, is an evolving tribute to iconic African American figures whose lives and legacies continue to shape the rhythm and resonance of Black culture. While earlier works were rendered in graphite and expressive acrylic wash, the series has evolved into richly textured acrylic paintings, each piece rooted in the vernacular tradition of the memorial T-shirt. These shirts, worn as mobile shrines, become public affirmations of grief, love, and unbroken lineage. They collapse time between the living subjects who wear them and the ancestors they bear—including Toni Morrison, Tupac Shakur, and Afeni Shakur—asserting that Black life cannot be flattened by death.
At the heart of this series lies the word negus, an Amharic word from Ethiopia meaning “king” or “sovereign,” offered here as a gender-neutral term underscoring royalty. Easily misread or misheard because of its similarity to a familiar slang word, negus is deliberately deployed as an act of disruption. By playing on this association in a subversive act of what the artist calls “poetic surrealism,” Pecou creates fertile ground for liberation, reclaiming sovereignty and affirming pride. Negus becomes a rallying cry, expressing survival, freedom, and spiritual succession. Each figure depicted is presented as Black royalty—crowned through the devotional act of ancestral veneration.
At once elegy and exhalation, this body of work transforms mourners into monuments, loss into legacy. Real Negus Don’t Die reminds us that Black life, when seen through the lens of truth, beauty, and sovereignty, is eternally enthroned! Ask yourself: what kind of ancestor do you want to be?
We Are the Seeds
In the series We Didn’t Realize We Were Seeds, Pecou explores Black identity across time and cultures, encompassing art, fashion, politics, and spirituality. He employs Afrotropes—a term coined by art historians Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson to describe recurring visual forms that have emerged within, and become central to, the formation of African diasporic visual culture and identity.
In these works, Pecou exercises his agency as an artist not only in referencing Afrotropes but in actively creating and reconfiguring them—giving these visual forms new life in contemporary culture. Cowrie shells are activated as currency and conduits of spiritual transmission. Durags become masks or crowns that adorn Black bodies. Backpacks rest on floating shelves made of books—mobile altars of remembrance. Jordan 1 sneakers are offered as power objects, symbols of flight, relics of cultural moments. Resin molds of Baule figures become surrogate sculptures of spiritual retention and contemporary sites for divine communication. These works open passages into Afro-Surrealist terrain, planting seeds of regenerative possibility toward speculative futures.
