Fahamu Pecou to guest edit Art Papers

• http://clatl.com/atlanta/ImageArchives?by=1223504
• “Touching Souls,” Fahamu Pecou

Atlanta visual artist and hip-hop scholar Fahamu Pecou recently announced his plan “to explore the intersectionality between fine art and hip-hop culture” as the January 2014 guest editor of the internationally-focused, locally-based Art Papers magazine.

While interviewing him last week for a separate story, he talked about what motivated him to take on the guest editing role.

“Part of the reason why I wanted to guest edit an issue of Art Papers on that theme of hip-hop and art is because I wanted to show the parallels and the intersections,” he said. “I think a lot of people have done a great deal of work to try to distance the two. But I’m trying to show how they’re actually interrelated, and they really come from a similar place.”

If you’re familiar with Pecou’s work, you’re already familiar with the irony here. Art Papers was one of the publications he included in his early series of mock magazine covers (see above) that parodied and critiqued the link between celebrity, spectacle and black masculinity within in hip-hop. So in a sense, he’s come full circle.

Through his current work and Ph.D. studies at Emory University’s Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA), he focuses on spanning that gap between the fine arts world and the hip-hop community. Meanwhile, he’s lining up a team of international arts critics, hip-hop artists, visual artists and writers for what he says will be “the most comprehensive dialogue about art and hip hop by a major periodical to date.”

And in case you’re wondering, he promises there will be a dope issue release party when it drops.

You can hear Pecou talk more about his own evolution as an artist on the first edition of ABLradio’s Arts & Craft show with co-hosts Dominick Brady and Carla Aaron-Lopez.