Fahamu Pecou‘s solo exhibition Whirl Trade will open with a reception Nov 14, at Get This! Gallery in Atlanta, GA.

The show runs through Jan 9, 2010. An artist talk: Saturday, November 21, 2009, 1PM (in conjunction with Westside Arts 3rd Saturday Art Walk).

Whirl Trade is Fahamu Pecou’s first solo exhibition with Get This! Gallery. The show will focus on a new suite of NEOPOP paintings inspired by his travels abroad and specifically in Africa. The exhibitionaddresses the impressions, interpretations and misconceptions of blackness that African descended communities perform for each other. Referencing the photos of West African photographer Malick Sidibe, Fahamu has created a series of black and white images that are interpreted as faux magazine covers. The exhibition is the mash-up of black bodies influencing and being influenced by one another through popular media and entertainment.

Here is what Fahamu Pecou had to say about the show:

“Hip-hop has become the dominant contemporary American cultural export. As a US-based artist who grew up as part of the first wave of hip-hop, I often experience a degree of culture shock when I travel to cities, towns and villages around the globe and watch the context and form of my “home” culture appropriated in ways that appear misconstrued and distorted. In part, WHIRL TRADE re-presents, questions and plays with these global representations.

Likewise, African American cultural art forms, like hip-hop, have often recycled the same misinterpretations of African culture and Africanisms that US citizens are fed through media, music and entertainment. WHIRL TRADE, then, is my own dizzying struggle to discover what “blackness” we learn from each other through these cross-cultural fun house mirrors as well as some of the African roots we miss through these distortions.”