Carla is your ATLien Intellectual.

Fahamu Pecou: blakPresidential

The blakPresidential Review:

Recently I haven’t been able to keep Fahamu Pecou’s series blakPresidential out of my mind. His paintings remind me of pieces of a complex cultural/political puzzle that I should put together.

It’s similar to how I view black America. Within a painting, he’s made a statement that I have been trying to figure out for some time. Many people chose to view black America as separate entity and I’ll say it: those people are wrong. Instead of viewing American culture as just black and white, maybe we should think about the entire construct of what it means to be American. When we take a look at what is deemed mainstream, we are still littered with negative imagery of African Americans. Some black girls appear to be whitewashed versions of real black girls and black boys look like they are in constant subliminal training to be a part of the federal judicial system.

Pecou on the other hand, has taken a look at our historical November 2008 election and created a body of work surrounding the image of an African American male at the center of the political universe. Something and someone that has never reached this far into our socio-political culture.

One thing that makes me a fan of his work is the fact that he has put his face as focal point of his paintings. The repetition of his portrait is a repetition of his FAHAMU PECOU IS THE SH*T! character. I then notice the scattered pieces of text and how they are little notes into his psyche. Lastly, I take a gander at the brushstrokes of the paintings represent how the identity development of the African-American is continually a work in progress. By using magazine covers as his theatrical stage I realize how little mainstream media puts an African-American male on the cover that isn’t involved in sports and entertainment solely. The influences behind his work stretch from Willem deKooning’s drippy and bold brushstrokes to Jean Michel Basquiat’s graffiti scribble notes to contemporary pop culture’s love affair with image and design, as seen in BlakMaybe. Stark, minimal design is Pecou’s platform for keeping black faces as the center element with his text surrounding his figures as accents to his conceptual idea. Like I always say, you can’t get past the mental constrictions of racism is you ain’t used to seeing a nigga’s face daily. Just his face. Now that we have a new hurdle to jump over, an African-American male making powerful decisions for the world’s most liberal country. How is our mainstream public going to handle that?

“Thinking through the process of media propaganda brought me to my current work with magazine covers. Playing on the public’s psychological reaction to magazines, and preconceived ideas about who should be in them, I began projecting my image and ideas on the covers of magazines.” – Fahamu Pecou, statement from his website.

Once upon a time in America before celebrity was a disease that affected us all, the image of black was something of struggling minorities fighting to find where they fit in a country that has used and abused them for centuries. Many were interested in figuring out how to better their lives by finding decent work to provide for the family. However, due to the liberal politics and color issues of the mid-1960s, another African-American stereotype was created and has flourished even stronger. If we were to become celebrated pimps and hustlers since the 1970s then eventually an equal had to arise. Enter blakPresidential. He has blakPresidential friends that look like him and his blakPresidential wife is featured by his side. He has comments on the Recession and is interested in fine art community. Elements that are similar to a normal American, right? The smaller details begin to uncover the celebration of a blakPresident such “Right On” in TheCode and the nationality questions that constantly bombard our current president in UnAmerican Idol. And of course blakPresidential and his negro cronies are great examples of people visually un-American because he is not the typical white, Christian all-American war-fighting male in his 40s.

No. BlakPresidential is a representation of America. He built America according to DuBois and where would America be without her Negro peoples?

Looking deeper into his works, one needs to be aware of the constant images that are slamblasted at black people daily. Yes, they are ones of sports and entertainment. Who’s doing a great job of play basketball or football? Who is selling the most rap records as ringtones? Look at the exotic, light-skinned girl over there! Keep away from the angry dark-skinned black girl! Blah blah blah. Back and forth we hear of this group of black people but never the ones that don’t lead those lives or are interested in living those lives. In Pecou’s work, he is trying his best to create a new image of the African-American, specifically male. His understanding of roots are of his that were created here in America. He is, after all, an American born artist. He may be used to positive stories of struggle and success. His idea of a black male could be one that is strong, intelligent and self-sufficient. To finally have the greatest success story in black history to happen has sparked a new definition of American to him. It creates a new aesthetic universe for Pecou to conquer and take for his own. I wish for him to stay on the same track of offering a powerful discussion on something that I believe we should strongly consider: redefining the image of the African-American. By political association, we as black people seem to be no longer on the books as a second class citizen. But if we constantly have imagery of us presented in a format that when observed are actions of second class citizens (obsessed with only money-making, highest consumers of materialistic goods such as shoes and jewelry and constant law offenders) then how can we move forward? How can we continue to grow without forgetting our roots? We look to our artists for solutions to our proverbial questions.

Fahamu Pecou gave you his in his painting, ArtOfficial, by having his portrait reflect that of American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics. They were good enough to represent America in the track and field competitions. They were great enough to win the gold and silver medal but when they wanted to represent how they had come to understand growing up in America, they were ordered to be suspended from the US team and were threatened with being banned from the Olympic village in Mexico City. At one moment, the whole world had one more example of the racial tension in America. That moment was exemplary in describing being black in America. If Pecou is at all facing any amount of protest or dislike for his work, then I fear only that his audience has missed his message of tolerance and celebration of living during a monumental time of US history.

For that understand, black history is US history. It’s just a shame that it has taken us this long to realize that the two are compliments of another and that they will always be connected to one another.

Fahamu Pecou, American Gothik, 2009

Fahamu Pecou, BlakMaybe, 2009

Fahamu Pecou, TheCode, 2009

Fahamu Pecou, ArtOfficialIntelligence, 2009

NCCU highest public ranked HBCU in US

North Carolina Central University was ranked tenth in the nation and first in the state according to U.S. News and World Report’s survey of historically black colleges and universities on measures of the quality of undergraduate education. It is the top-rated public HBCU in the country.

“We are taking a moment to appreciate this good news but only a moment,” said NCCU’s Chancellor Charlie Nelms. “Our objective is to become even stronger.”

The ranking was based on retention and graduation rates, class size, faculty preparedness and compensation, and the opinions of administrators among the 81 HBCUs surveyed.

Behind NCCU, North Carolina’s Elizabeth City State University placed eleventh, followed by Winston-Salem State University (17), Johnson C. Smith University (19), Bennett College (21), North Carolina A&T State University (25), and Fayetteville State University (29). Livingstone College, Shaw University, and Saint Augustine’s College were unranked.

According to U.S. News and World Report, the top ten HBCUs in the nation are:
Spellman College, Atlanta Ga. (1); Howard University, Washington D.C. (2); Morehouse College, Atlanta Ga. (3); Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. (4); Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, La. (5); Hampton University, Hampton Va. (6); Tuskegee University, Tuskegee Ala. (7); Claflin University, Orangeburg S.C. (8); Dillard University, New Orleans, La. (8); and North Carolina Central University, Durham N.C. (10).

www.nccu.edu

Short list of new contemporary artists

The gap: Blackness and Contemporary African-American Artists

I think I got it. The clues are in the art works. Flipping through page after page of Google images on various contemporary artists I’ve realized that this new school of black artists are approaching the issues of blackness by showing the integration of what it means to be an African in America 400 years later. Our new school of African American artists have taken it upon themselves to continue commenting on the nature of the Black experience. As I look at their works I find many of them have scored through history looking for the ways to re-assign power back to black folks. Some of them have painted their interpretation of African history, others have appropriated and manipulated entire art and history genres. As I begin to collect more information on black contemporary artists I find that I will be able to decode the mystery of black culture and aid my people into seeing the bigger picture of how powerful we are as a group; Africans, Black folks and African Diaspora cats.

List of artists [ORGANIZED CHRONOLOGICALLY]:

Martin Puryear

Barkley Hendricks

Jean Michel Basquiat

Gary Simmons

Lorna Simpson

Carrie Mae Weems

Laylah Ali

Rodney McMillan

Jeff Sonhouse

Kara Walker

Glenn Ligon

Kehinde Wiley

Rashid Johnson

Wangechi Mutu

William Pope.L

Shinique Smith

Henry Taylor

Mickalene Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas

Dawn Okoro

Michi

Amber Carroll

Fahamu Pecou

Blake Hicks

THE LIST IS GROWING.

Pop culture and the Negro

Mainstream really is an evil place. It’s ultimately predictable. It thinks for us and we become its products. It’s all products selling products. The underground is just as evil. It has evolved from separate sub cultures to a homogenous wretch of everything. Or it’s a youthful product promoting rebellion and urbanism. I’m bored with that as well. I guess it’s because we’re so saturated with what is cool and colorful that we often forget about what we really want. Pop culture provides us all with a fantastic reality. And it is fantastic. We get to see colorful signs every step we take.

Are you thirsty? Quench your thirst with a Coke.

Are hungry looking to stretch your buck? Go to McDonald’s and celebrate Black History Month all February!

I’ve decided to make it my life to decoding visual nihilism.

What is visual nihilism? Just as it sounds. Imagery that is harmful to the people of color in America. Everyday we’re with flooded with images, ads and movies that depict how our culture is visually communicated to the rest of the world. America is a big place and can be powerfully influential through the advertisement and the moving picture. In 2008, Hank Willis Thomas produced a body of work titled Unbranded that strips ads between the years 1968 and 2008 of their text leaving only the background image. By the text the being stripped away the true nature of the ad seems to be revealed to the viewer. We have a questionable photograph, graphic or illustration. The things that we’ve abhorred as a group of people are still alive in the advertisement. I fear that there are black people out there that continue to agree and believe the images that they see. It makes me wonder why they choose to continue to live within the Matrix of American reality.

Wake up, I ask you. From our clothes to our music, it doesn’t belong to us anymore. It belongs to those that are dictating our very well-being. The same ones that know we have the highest death rates by healthcare are the same ones that are pushing these products into our backyards.

Products are geared toward its individual demographic. Demographics meaning a particular or designated group of people that is the target market for a company’s product. It works on us all, we can’t avoid it. It makes us devoted to particular brands because images of black people are next to their products. Once upon a time, no company had images of black people. Then as black people became more and more recognized as a group with buying power, then more and more black people were dripping into advertisements and television shows and movies. Some will call it integration, I call it financial planning. We’ve began to learn that companies and their products are actually more harmful for us than they say they are. Cigarette ads have banned their mascots but when I walk to my neighborhood corner store, I still see black people smoking a fresh menthol pack of Newports as if they haven’t learned the high health risks that come with smoking cigarettes. It’s as if we’ve been left behind on the newly updated notion of an American dream. The part of the dream where we stop squandering our money on materialistic gains and precious items that have no significant value. We’ve been conned, duped and suckered into believing that our buying power states an important significance with the “rest” of the American community.

As I watched an old Soulja Boy clip in which he commented on his criticisms for saying ignorant phrases, his only point of reference was that he was a millionaire by the time he was 16 years old. In response to his comment was another video by Dr. Boyce Watkins in which he made a comment about how money truly operates. When you’re stupid with money those that are smart with money will take your money away. This statement resonated with me as I thought about how many of my black counterparts are only interested in money but not of real issues that affect our community such as poor healthcare, poor education and rising crime. On the inside looking further inside we can no longer continue to abide by certain ideals deemed as black culture as they continue to destroy our unity amongst one another.

For the Negro and Pop culture, we need to take a closer, personal look at how we view ourselves without the voice of  a white male or female journalist telling us what our culture is. As far as I can understand Soulja Boy is not a part of my culture. He is the creation of decades and decades of harmful imagery placed in the black community to make us all seem like a gold-loving, money grubbing lazy ass nigga. He took the easy way out by cooning in front of thousands and thousands of other uneducated people believing that his word is as golden as the Gospels. I highly disagree. He makes me wonder if he knows the demise of MC Hammer. Losing all that money got him on the D-List forever. He’s not a popular item anymore. When it comes to money, I fully understand that if you’re not smart with it you can lose it at any given moment. MC Hammer was the example of poor financial planning and becoming a baby of pop culture by failing to understand that being a pawn is a bad thing. By being a mainstream darling and/or mainstream obsessor, we miss the bigger picture of progressing the betterment of our black American nation. The war with race isn’t over seeing as to how it is so engrained in our psychological DNA as a country but I’ll be damned if I’m going to continue to uphold black culture principles that will continue to be raped by mainstream visual nihilism forcing me to believe that what is black in the media is black in real life.

The media couldn’t survive my real life or anybody else’s that is black and as awakened as I am.

End the destruction of visual nihilism and take back your culture. This includes Middle Eastern, Asian, Native American, African, East European, South Pacific, Latino, Hispanic and the list goes on.

America, you ain’t ready for what I’ve got to say now.

no gospel of wealth wanted here

Lately, I’ve been learning more about religions. So far I’ve come to believe that there are five majors religions and everything else falls in and out of those religions. There is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. I find that all of them relate to one another whether the practitioners chose to see the similarities or not. The conclusions that I’ve come to are that they are all different ways of finding God. I do not think that any one is better than the other. I believe that it all ends with how God chooses to communicate His plans for you. From my readings, I’m most connected with Buddhism at this age. I have my personal beliefs but then there is the word of God and how He commands us all to live in a higher state than our primal selves.

Our primal selves are attached to worldly things and materialistic possessions that trap us into a endless cycle of want and demand. I believe that these are the things that are making us all unhealthy toward ourselves. I’m not sure if I can participate in that lifestyle any longer. I do believe that we all do have a higher purpose but it is because of self-inflicted suffering that we are not able to define success and personal growth. Our personal growth is not measured by the amount of money we have in our pockets. Indeed money helps us all to live as we function in our modern society but because we praise man-made objects and primordial satisfaction we lose sight of the fact that our spiritual self needs as much attention as our mental and physical being.

For years, I have denied myself of looking for God and where I belong in the bigger picture of life. I felt that I was not a part of any plan and that I just existed as a human being. I find this lifestyle to be destructive because we begin to fall into a thought process only dealing with ourselves and no one else. We must live amongst each other as a community of people looking to find our ways toward God. Many feel that you must lose everything that you hold near and dear to you. I find that you must simply reorganize your life for better living.

I believe that one must understand what it means to “vibrate, higher.” When we are born, we’re in a low vibration operating simply to eat and sleep. As we grow, our vibration becomes higher but can be stuck on a lower level. This can lead to the unhappiness that is in all our lives from the beginning of birth. If we do not vibrate higher then we cannot achieve the gifts that God has bestowed upon us to return to Him on a plane outside of ours. Wouldn’t that be called Heaven or Paradise? Do not be afraid, just take a closer look into your heart and really begin to think to yourself if what we are doing is truthfully right. In all the religious texts that I’ve read God wants us to express love, kindness and compassion for one another. By doing these things, we gain wisdom and understanding in life. We communicate better with one another and intolerance slowly begins to fade from our hearts and minds.

By eradicating certain unnecessary fortunes of the modern world, we can begin a healing process between man and woman, husband and wife, friend and lover. For too long have we battled against one another. I do not want to participate in such harming actions. I think we should keep a good sense of humor about life in order to unearth the conventions we’ve placed upon each other. At the end of the day, everyone of every color and gender is my equal. We are just trying to find our ways back into the Divine Love that is God.

My new venture will be a trial unto myself more than anything in the world. All I can say now is “Dear Higher Power, I here you calling. Finally.”

Ha. It took me years to understand it and now I understand the need to believe in something higher than us all. Hearing that scientists only know 4% of the Universe while the other 96% is unknown can really make you think twice about if we’re really alone.

Women's Liberation in 2009: I don't get it

I believe the freedom of woman is coming close to the best definition we all can define. The one of being ourselves and being able to express ourselves freely. At least I hope so.

For my entire life, I’ve questioned the ideals of femininity and what it really means to be a woman. Honestly, to me, what many people have come to understand is femininity I think is backwards. It seems to have caused a rift amongst women somewhere down the line. For an example, I have friends that love Desperate Housewives and Sex in the City. I hate those shows. She loves them because they’ve empowered her enough to be sexually liberated and as glamorous as possible. I think they’ve pushed her thinking into another box of thinking thanks to great marketing and “life-like” situations. I applaud her sexual liberation but disprove of how she got to that point. I believe these types of programs are a great platform for discussing issues that women may normally avoid and since their television debuts women have began to notice that they still need more work on their personal selves. My argument is not a 70s feminist argument in believing that men are continuing to hold us down but one of social and cultural awareness. It is an argument focused upon true women’s liberation and what that really means to the modern woman.

By the time Sex and the City was discussing in depth issues about feminine sexuality over a New York breakfast, other television outlets were praising Paris Hilton for being a whore. I never knew that whores were going to become trendy. As a result, other whores have been coming out of the closet about their actions. Now we have identified the rift. On one end, there’s the discussion of sex and sexuality, on the other end is the praise of sexual promiscuity. I don’t know when I agreed to sexual promiscuity being cool. As a black girl, looking back figures like Lil Kim and Foxy Brown were more harmful than actually liberating. They used their sexual prowess as exploitation of feminine sexuality and seduction. They erased the mind of a woman and replaced it with verbal tales of hot pussy and skillful dicksucking. They played into the hypersexuality of black men and women and ended up harming the nation of youth after them.

“I want a freak in the morning, a freak in the evening. Just like me. I want a roughneck brother who can satisfy me…” – Adina Howard

Whether we are black girls or white girls, our freaky tales are catching up with us in harmful ways. A national study conducted in 2008 found thata quarter of teenage women have at least one of four common sexually transmitted diseases according to a New York Times article. This is unreal to me. Sometimes, getting all the booty does not mean that you are sexually liberated. Showing off your body parts does not mean that you are sexually liberated.  Really, just because you’ve kissed another girl or danced freaky with another girl or experimental fucked another girl for a boy does not make you sexually liberated. It seems as if little girl dreams have been transformed into the worst nightmare anyone could ever approach. Daddy’s little girl has turned herself into a figurative whore for the masses to fancy and dote upon. How disgusting is that? That’s not liberating, that’s failing. We failed somewhere. That’s not sexy. Sex appeal encompasses so much more than simply the physical. It is attitude, intelligence and above all character. There are many women that believe in the curves of their body, thin and thick. Many intelligent women love looking fiercely sexy in their outfits. It’s just that they’re not as interesting as our counterparts that are viciously dripping with a come-fuck-me nature in life. That’s a dangerous for your health kind of woman. A dangerous woman understands her sexuality and chooses her lovers wisely because she cherishes her mind, body and soul. She doesn’t bring intense drama to her life. She loves being a young woman and experiencing as many adventures as she can with her friends. That is a sexy woman.

When did all the negative connotations about women become such a cultural phenomenon? Women are already broken up amongst one another in different cultures; do we really have to glorify the whore of women as the modern woman? I ask because this is a paternal figure gone crazy that presents itself as an independent woman playing by a man’s sexual fantasy in order to attain financial and celebrity success.

Karrine Stephens known as Superhead is a great example for this duality. Every day we hear (un)Rap superstars boast about how well they laid the pipe down in which ever honey skinned ho, after while, you can’t help but to wonder if that’s really true. Enter Superhead. She gave the (un)Rap world a tremble in their fashion label man panties by exposing her sexual exploits with mainstream America. Story after story she gave spicy details as to whom she’s fucked, sucked, and financially loved for booze, drugs and clothes. She’s now married and has released a new book helping women love their men like porn stars in the bedroom. Ah. A link. A former music video model/porn star is telling me how I can be sexy? How to find, seduce and keep the man you want? I guess we all could take a couple of lessons from a whore on video. She does indeed do a great job of sucking dick. At least I don’t have to be known as a whore for the rest of my life. I’m not going to leave this argument by completely bashing Karrine Stephens as a woman. She did create a successful business out of her psychologically hypersexualized nature. I really don’t understand how this is cool and I challenge anyone to disagree with me wholeheartedly.

Mothers take their daughters to book signings of women like this and don’t think of the repercussions it is doing to the mind. All the whores came out of the woodworks and displayed the whores they have in training. Some will criticize this as a harsh depiction of the modern woman. No, I’m only exposing the pollutants in the smoke that’s hovering in front of the modern woman’s mirror of femininity. By all means, a women’s sexual power can only be boosted when she claims it for her own and defines it as her own. However, I become concerned only when what is depicted in the mainstream is a testimony to what our modern women appear to be. Even porn stars true to their culture have stepped their industry up by appealing to women sexually as well as mentally. Few of them have even come out of the wood works exposing sex mysteries and highlighting examples of sexually liberated women throughout history. Another famed porn star conducted an interview with Adbusters commenting on the American obsession with pornography and the Internet. The difference is the intelligence and attention of market in which these two groups of people have in common. And let me state the porn culture as an underground culture stays with the adult market and is not a part of the mainstream culture parading around as wholesome in order to gain fatter pockets. These bad examples of women in our mainstream media are causing young woman in America to become jaded to the reality that is womanhood. Everyone is playing into a visual game that is assaulting our compassion for one another.

Former supermodel Tyra Banks walks a fine line as well. Here we have a woman that is aggressively attacking women’s issues on her nationally syndicated talk show while selling dreams of modeling contracts to young girls everywhere. They’re never really guaranteed a full modeling contract with an agency. Just one year with CoverGirl and 15 minutes of fame. They’re all tall, thin with exotic features and small town values or big city attitudes. I think they’re quite cute.  While her television show pushes heavy discussions about race and gender from each of the girls’ different backgrounds, the show has a hard time discussing issues about young girls with weight. We can talk about race every episode every season but the heavy issues about gender questions and body attitudes are only acknowledged but not examined. At the end of the day though she’s generated great attention to women’s issues by utilizing her self-owned talk show as platform to discuss difficult issues that affect women’s lives. It’s just that she understands that show business appreciates a pretty face at the end of the day and takes the information she learns from her young models in training and translates them into topics on her talk show. Not a bad business idea I can agree with.

With more industry example like Tyra Banks, we can continue an open discussion to make ourselves grow into a true, independent and modern woman. Since the beginning of the Women’s Liberation movement, there have been great strides to discussing women’s issues in order to gain our equality on this plane. I do believe the world has forgotten our power but I also believe that we as women have let money spoil our goals by capitalizing off the negative connotations of our group. There is nothing wrong with claiming your sexiness but there is something wrong with exploiting your sexuality for a dollar. We live in a world where everyday people do something strange for some change without thinking about the later consequences. The average American may have more health problems the ones pervious but we are also living longer than before. Time can feel like the blink of an eye or an eternity. By continuing to degrade ourselves for the bottom dollar, we’re forgetting that by claiming our identity we can become more and more powerful women as a collective. It may sound like a fairy tale but I call it true liberation. By taking responsibility for our actions as women, we can advance our society into becoming a more enriched and wealthy society by speaking up against these visual pollutants. Sarah Palin was a joke and so are the Real Housewives of Any County or City in America. They only perpetuate the continuing viciousness women have created for one another by letting sexually exploited materialistic gains represent their character and while hiding behind pseudo-intelligent statements to show how strong and independent they are. How wretchedly evil to place this image of the modern women in front of women everywhere. The public reminds me of a Pavlovan experiment. If we keep showing the same stimuli repeatedly, eventually we are going to become conditioned to the stimuli. Somewhere down the line, someone is eventually going to say enough is enough.

Moreover, I have had enough. I’ll reclaim my sexuality and explain to you how. I am a representation of the modern woman. I am not afraid of the fact that I had premarital sex nor afraid to share that I do have consensual sex with men. Many women do. How do you think Superhead got to where she was? She just opened her mouth about her freaky tales while I’ve kept mine closed to the public. I love my body. I have a small belly because I’m a little lazy but catch me on the streets and I can outrun you anywhere. I don’t own a car and I don’t have any true to definition ex-boyfriends. I have many friends of all genders. I love them all and I care about them all. I don’t want to be a “model” of any kind. I do have my favorite models and designers. I would love to be a jetsetter and have a closet filled with Sex and the City fresh clothes but the reality is that I have a bigger goal than what’s in my closet. I’m not your typical girl. I don’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend because the label comes with a territory that I’m not willing to participate in. I don’t being somebody’s woman because they treat me as such. I am a woman that still values chivalry as much as I value what’s on my partner’s mind. I really do prefer to communicate rather than play silly little games for attention. And I love girly things such as make up and lacey underwear, I just don’t own a lot of it. However, at the end of the day, I’m more happy with just being humorously intelligent me than to be the image of what women look like today. This is what I’ve come to understand what women’s liberation should be for the modern woman. She should be able to describe herself in as many words as she chooses rather than abide by repetitive notions of femininity that her freethinking mind can’t comprehend. A woman can be whatever she wants from the porn star to the homemaker. From the career driven executive to the intellectual artist. We have so many choices to be whatever we want but if we continue to play into our former patriarchal roles as achievements to banishing the feeble-minded female then we are quite wrong for committing self-destruction. These bitches are headed for self-destruction and I ain’t going with them. Straight up.

I got better things to do with my life. I hope you do too.