Umar Rashid (b. 1976), also known as Frohawk Two Feathers, is an American artist based in Los Angeles. His work was included in “Made in L.A. 2020: a version” at the Hammer Museum and is held by the Brooklyn Museum and Zeitz MOCAA. In paintings, sculptures and works on paper he chronicles the invented “Frenglish Empire”, retelling colonial history to examine race, class and power.
Umar Rashid (b. 1976, Chicago, Illinois, USA), also known as Frohawk Two Feathers, is an American artist based in Los Angeles. He studied cinema and photography at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, graduating in 2000, before devoting himself to studio practice. In paintings, sculptures and works on paper he chronicles an invented world, the “Frenglish Empire” – an imagined union of France and England said to have ruled from 1648 to 1880. Through its characters, conflicts, artefacts and ephemera he retells colonial history, placing people of colour at the centre and examining race, class and power. His visual vocabulary draws on sources ranging from Renaissance portraiture, Persian miniatures and Spanish colonial manuscripts to Native American ledger art, comics and hip-hop culture. His work was included in “Made in L.A. 2020: a version”, presented at the Hammer Museum and The Huntington, and he has had solo exhibitions at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. His work is in collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Nevada Museum of Art and Zeitz MOCAA. He also performs music as a rapper. The work on paper “Comely Gigi with the Tattooed Eyelids” (2010), in ink, watercolour, coffee and tea, offered by TUMO Gallery, is typical of his portraits of figures from this imagined history.
