Imagining New Worlds

The exhibition Imagining New Worlds is divided into three parts: a retrospective of the twentieth-century artist Wifredo Lam and responses to Lam's legacy by contemporary artists José Parlá and Fahamu Pecou.

Imagining New Worlds traces the lengthy career of Wifredo Lam (1902-1982), perhaps best remembered as a member of the Surrealist group in the 1940s. Born in Cuba to a Chinese father and mother of African and Spanish descent, Lam gave expression to his multiracial and cultural ancestry through a signature hybrid style of painting that blended Surrealism, magical realism, modernism, and postmodernism. The exhibition begins with the academic work made while studying painting in Madrid, and includes the fantastical mid-century canvases that incorporate figures from the syncretic religion Santéria. His work is informed by a cross-cultural fusion of influences such as Afro-Cuban symbolism and Negritude, a movement that rejected the French colonial framing of African identity. 

Atlanta-based artist and scholar Fahamu Pecou (born 1975) pushes the boundaries of fine art and popular culture through his blending of performance and traditional visual media. Pecou is particularly engaged with the commonalities found within the intersections of Négritude – the mid-century movement by black Francophone intellectuals to create a black identity separate from that of their French colonizers – hip-hop, and Yoruba spiritual cosmology. 

In both his performance art and painting, Pecou presents an alter-ego that operates as an intermediary within the fraught dynamics of black masculinity. A virtuosic painter, Pecou takes visual cues from the covers of vintage periodicals from the Johnson Publishing Company. The first black-owned publishing company, Johnson Publishing fought American stereotypes of blackness by showcasing a rising black middle class beginning in the 1940s. This body of work challenges the viewer to reimagine the roles individuals are asked to play in the production of art and culture.