Kopeikin Gallery is proud to present “Trapademia”, a new exhibition of paintings and drawings by Fahamu Pecou. This will be his first exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will open on Saturday, May 4th with a reception for the artist from 6:00 – 8:00 pm and continues through June 22nd.

In his new body of work, “Trapademia” Pecou’s paintings engage with the liminal spaces of cultural knowledge and understanding, spaces that are often overlooked or misinterpreted by the mainstream. In particular, hip hop music. “I approach the series inquisitively, linking trap to broader understandings of the collective hustle mentality and survival strategies performed in these marginalized spaces” explains Pecou.

The popular “trap” music style persists despite the heavy criticisms levied against it. Claims that this genre glorifies drugs and criminal behavior feed into existing narratives about Black youth and fail to recognize the creativity and ingenuity embedded in the art form. In so doing, fruitful engagements with the politics of resistance to ongoing oppressions in the Black community are also missed. The works in this series draw on specific songs and mine the language of trap: lyrics, fashion, comportment, interwoven with elements of indigenous African spirituality and memory Pecou’s paintings offer an alternative view of Black male youth.

Pecou was the subject of a retrospective titled “Miroirs de l’Homme” at Société Générale in Paris in 2017. He has been featured in several solo and group museum exhibitions in the US and abroad. Museum shows including” Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection,” "Imagining New Worlds," High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA., "State of the Art" Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR., "GRAV-I-TY," at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCAGA), "Southern Accent: Seeking the South in Contemporary Art," Nasher Museum of Art Duke University, Durham, NC., Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), Brooklyn, NY, the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum, Amistad Center, Hartford, CT, and Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX. just to name some of them.

Pecou's work has been reviewed in numerous publications such as Art in America, Harper's Magazine, NY Arts Magazine, among others. Pecou was honored in 2018 with the NBAF Fine Art + Fashion Visual Artist Award and is a recipient of the 2016 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award and numerous other prizes. Pecou's work is featured in noted private and public collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C., the Nasher Museum at Duke University, The High Museum of Art, Paul R. Jones Collection, Clark Atlanta University Art Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, The West Collection and Société Générale, Paris, France, among others. Pecou received his Ph.D. degree at the Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA) at Emory University in 2018. The artist lives and works in Atlanta, GA.