Fahamu Pecou - The People Could Fly

Conduit Gallery is honored to present, The People Could Fly, an exhibition of large scale drawings and installation by Atlanta based artist, Fahamu Pecou. Notes Pecou, “Within The People Could Fly, the notion of "flights of fancy" ceases to indicate frivolity or self-indulgence. Instead, it becomes an invitation to imagine, hope, and dream. In the context of a Black male experience—which is often conflated with despair and hardships—such an invitation can be considered a daring act of resistance.” Pecou is a recipient of the 2016 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award and is a PhD candidate at Emory University.

In cities around the world, the sight of shoes hanging from powerlines evokes a host of reactions and has become urban legend to be interpreted in myriad ways. Pecou uses the art of “shoefiti” (the act of throwing a pair of shoes onto telephone wires, powerlines, or other raised wires) as an allegory for overcoming and escaping one’s limitations - both those assumed and implied.

In addition to the drawings, crisscrossing the gallery space will be a number of wires in which Pecou will install Flight School, an installation of shoes thrown over wires each with embedded speakers playing a multi-channel sound collage created by Pecou for the exhibition.

Fahamu Pecou is an artist and scholar based in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned a B.F.A. from the Atlanta College of Art in 1997 and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Emory University's Institute of Liberal Arts. Since 2011 Pecou has been featured in several exhibitions including solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC (2016); National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, GA (2016); Lyons Wier Gallery, New York, NY, (2016); BACKSLASH, Paris (2015) High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA (2015); Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ (2011); Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC (2011); and Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2009.) Pecou is currently included in the landmark exhibition Southern Accent: Seeking the South in Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art Duke University, Durham, NC. The exhibition will travel to the Speed Museum in April 2017. His work is represented in several notable collections including; the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; the Nasher Museum at Duke University, Paul R. Jones Collection, the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, the Société Générale, Paris, France; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK the Clark Atlanta University Art Collection and Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia.