All right, I think we can get
started.
Thank you all for joining us
for today's lunchtime art talk,
which, as many of you know, is a
weekly series led by Hammer curators
on works from our collection.
This series will focus on artists
featured in Made in L.A.
2020: a version.
Free reservations to visit our
biennial at the Hammer Museum are
available now online.
Visit our website to reserve your
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your slot.
My name is Nicholas Barlow.
I'm a curatorial assistant at The
Hammer and I'll be facilitating
this afternoon's talk on Umar
Rashid.
After the presentation, I
will be able to answer any questions
you may have.
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So with that, I think we can start
talking about Umar Rashid's work.
So let's pull up the slide.
Thank you.
Umar Rashid is a Chicago born
Los Angeles based artist whose
practice moves across painting,
drawing, sculpture, garment and
music at the core of
his practice and at the core of his
work is an ever expanding cosmology
of alternative histories and
revisionist historical narratives.
Reconfigurations of official--in
quotes, "official"--historical
record shifted to acknowledge,
champion and plug in figures
marginalized, oppressed and
often erased from those histories.
Rashid's work is informed
by a wide array of hyper
reference.
Cultural figures and historical
symbols plucked from a panoply
of cultures and times
time periods which, when merged
together, collapsed geography
and temporality.
Though his figures can sometimes be
rendered in simple sketch like
forms, Rashid steers
clear of simplistic dichotomies,
challenging the viewer with complex,
iconographic language of arcane
classifying systems and cosmological
diagrams.
Umar is a self-described
storyteller who takes historical
fact to the base and imprints
upon it reconstructed history,
often surreal, often
absurd, but with a serious
focus on the looming ghosts of
colonialism and its long violence
and long effects.
His painterly tales complicate
the idea of what is true and false,
prompting us to consider
whether the truths that we are
taught may in back may in fact
be lies, fabricated
myths to continue and maintain
systems of power and oppression.
Today, I'll be focusing specifically
on Rashid's triptych currently on
display at The Hammer, which has
an incredible title, which I'll read
right now:
The Battle of Malibu (In Three Parts) 1795: Part One, See battle. Little red corvette; Part Two, The death of Father Wiyot. If we can do this to a god, imagine what we'll do to you; Part three, Surfriders vs the Jaguars from Mars, 2020.
Next slide.
I will use this work to discuss
Rashid's practice and idiosyncratic
visual lexicon,
which the artist has been honing and
expanding for decades.
I will also attempt to decode some
of the symbols and visual motifs
peppered throughout this work.
Here it is in display at the Hammer
Museum, which I would like to
emphasize now that we are open,
especially for works like Rashid's,
for Umar's, I would
recommend you come and see it in
person.
Not only so that you can capture
the scale, but the hyper detail,
which you'll see as we continue on.
It really, really benefits from
a kind of close reading.
Next slide.
Umar Rashid was born in Chicago
and raised on the city's south side.
His father was an artist and
playwright. His mother was an
actress and illustrator.
As a kid, Umar would mainly stay
inside reading history books and
encyclopedias given to him
by his grandmother, a valuable
spark, igniting his
intense interest in history and
mythology.
He studied at Chicago's Institute
of Positive Education, now
called the Betty Shabazz Academy.
It was here he received an education
that emphasized and championed black
history and versed in students
in the work of black artists and
historians.
Umar moved to Los Angeles around
2000.
For many years, he worked under a
series of pseudonyms and monikers
musically, he has performed as
Ken Cyclone, an improvizational
music and song generator,
as one half of Super Deluxe,
a throwback 80s rap group
with MCA jams and is
the grim teachers of
a faux golden age hip hop
group.
It was only in 2014 that he did his
first solo exhibition under his
birth name, Umar Rashid.
Next slide.
Rashid's most notable and longest
operating moniker was Faux
Hawk to Feathers, a name he don
to embody the role of scribe
and documenter of a fictitious
battle, the fictitious battles
and exploits of the French ghoulish
empire, an imaginary union
powerhouse combined of the French
and English lasting from sixteen
fifty eight through eighteen eighty.
For 17 years, more
documented this complex
historical saga which played out
over large and small canvases
and across drawings, portraits,
maps, costumes and faux
battle flags.
And these works, Umar depicts
battles of the Franglish
agents for Franglish
soldiers against native populations
of the lands they're trying to
colonize and I guess against
competing imaginary empires
such as the North American Belhaven
Republic and the Dutch Batvian
Empire.
Rashid has an extensive and
prolific writing practice which
accompanies his patented works and
objects, he writes out
the stories that give background
to his visual works extensively
researched these histories, become a
guide to Umar and
a key to the viewer, a way for us
to access them.
In many ways, he's taking this kind
of hybrid of history and
he's started to collapse them into
stories and hone them and
trying to make a kind of
multiverse, a narrative,
a larger narrative
or cosmos in which he engages.
Next slide.
The Battle of Malibu, Malibu, which
I mentioned is at the Hammer Museum,
has a corresponding work at the
Huntington, which I'm not really
going to talk about right now,
which is equally intricate and
amusing and and has a
and intense and funny and
dark and morose
and macabre.
And it also has an incredible title,
which is Stockholm Colefax.
Seventeen ninety five.
Goodbye, Censullo, my tormentor.
I still love you on the colonized
mind or a possible escape
into apathy or unbridled
joy, unbridled joy upon death
of your oppressor, followed by
raucous laughter.
And this I mean,
this is really kind of apt for
a lot of practice, which
is that it has this incredible,
long, intricate kind of
18th century title.
And also it has these kind of
turn of phrase is happening and
this playfulness to stop
Stockholm, California,
or California.
Is it kind of also a reference to
Stockton, California, you could say,
but also this idea of Stockholm
syndrome, especially looking at
the idea of of enslaved
people who basically had Stockholm
syndrome with their kind of
with the enslavers
that the
next slide.
And now to the Battle of Malibu.
The Battle of Malibu is the
culmination of over five years,
five years of work
and research on the colonization
and violence enacted upon the native
population of Southern California,
specifically the Tungamah and
Chumash people by the Spanish
empire.
It is a focus on the oppressive
and violent mission system which
enslaved native populations.
To whom are this
the imagining, the sight of Malibu
as a kind of sight for war was
a it was an amusing and kind of
fascinating exercise for him to
he started to think about Malibu
and the rocky cliffs and how hard it
would be to kind of enact a battle
or to take a mountain,
but also thought about
the kind of current day Malibu and
this idea of this hub of wealth
and these amazing homes and
imagining that as a site for
a battle or a kind of historic
battle that never happened,
which is to say that the battle of
Malibu, this term
actually is not a reference to a
real battle, but a fabricated one.
This kind of idea of Malibu and
destruction reminds me of a bit
of a chapter
of a book,
a chapter from the historian
Mike Daviss
book, Ecologies of Fear,
in which he has a chapter titled The
Case for Letting Malibu Burn.
It's the same kind of imagining
happening, though, in a different
way.
Next slide.
Mama came to this story,
the idea of the Battle of Malibu,
actually, it's been a long time
coming. As I mentioned, over five
years of research, but it
actually started in some ways
with his work, his earlier work
in dealing with franglais and
thinking about the kind of
colonization and battles of
eastern United States,
but also kind of a separate series
or a kind of continuation of that
series that he was doing on the
Caribbean.
And so both works
from the kind of eastern United
States and the Caribbean started to
slowly move east
and move inland and
from the Caribbean, move up the
Yucatan. And in his drawings
and writings, everything started
to move west.
And so this is also the culmination
of many years of slowly
crossing across the United States
to end up at the shore.
Next slide.
I'm going to try to go through some
of the images in here and I have a
lot of slides, I'm going to try to
do it really quickly.
But just once again, want to
emphasize that what you should do,
if you can and when you feel
comfortable to do so, is come
to the hammer or go to the
Huntington to see these works in
person.
They really
it really benefits from a very
close reading because it
has this kind of hyper detail.
Umar in the battle of
Malibu, Tippex
native cultures
and native peoples at war with
colonizers and at war with the
Spanish, but in a kind of
way that embraces a
very a variety
of of kind of visual
styles and especially kind of drawn
styles. So he's taking from not only
a kind of historical
renderings of battles done by
Native Americans,
specifically, let's say the
Plains Tribe Leger art
of people like Red Horse
documenting battles, but is also
borrowing from comic books, also
borrowing from a kind of Chicano
car culture and kind of
a drop in culture
to try to render all
of this cacophonous battle
that is happening.
Next slide.
Umar works in code
the many times there are codes
and kind of puns spread throughout
the throughout the canvas.
So here we have a figure
which is is written on the card,
says Black Jesus
driving in a Corvette.
And we have the Corvette both as
a stand in for the car,
but also for the French Navy
warship, the Corvette.
And also, as in talking to
Umar Rashid reference says it's also
a reference to the nineteen seventy
eight Mark Hamill comedy
Corvet Summer,
which I think no one has seen
except mama.
I had no idea about it.
But this code in this kind of
piling on of code and applying
many, many different codes and many,
many different symbols is not
necessarily to be read
or easily understood.
You're supposed to kind of live with
it, move through it, take what you
can from it.
But really what's happening is more
is creating this massive
network of images to kind of get
at these grander stories
of kind of conflict, battle,
colonization, violence
and long history.
Next slide.
As I mentioned, it is documentation
and a representation also
of a kind of reference to
the native population
of Southern California, specifically
the Tongva and the
Chumash.
And he actually pointed out to me
that Malibu, the term Malibu, the
original name for Malibu, would
have been Malibu, which
is the Chumash version of talking
about Malibu, is once again trying
to plug in this narrative
into a kind of grander
history of battle, but kind
of focusing on and giving empathy
and focus towards the kind
of native and oppressed in this
moment population
within that. Next slide.
Umar is a self-taught artist, and
he was trained in many ways by kind
of just a constant absorbing not
only of history, as I mentioned,
but also just a visual studies and
just every kind of visuality,
every kind of visual art form,
from comic books to fine art
to kind of Persian miniatures.
And so it not only is the work
kind of collapsing of history, but
Umar himself is a representation of
many, many different styles, all
kind of sandwiched together.
And I think it's very interesting
to think about his work also in
relationship to other kind of
self-taught artists,
such as figures like Bill Traylor
and Howard Finster, and this idea
of people who would be making
these expansive worlds that are
all kind of interconnected through
illustration and through these kind
of building up.
Next slide.
And there are these little moments
that capture that once
again when you get close to it that
you have, you can take time
with.
And again, I think that's something
to another advertize to come
and see the words in person, if you
can.
One of the major reference points
also for Umar is
next slide, the 15th
century painter
from the Netherlands, Hieronymus
Bosch.
And so Bosch, and especially
at work such as this, the Garden of
Earthly Delights creates
has created. This creates this
massive cacophony of
incredibly dense chaos,
of biblical narrative, historical
narrative, and all kind of piled up
onto each other in this hyper
surreal, humorous,
horrifying,
absurd
panorama.
And that is something that is very
much felt and seen within an hour's
work as this panorama of both
simultaneously kind of
humor, horror
and a surreal
depictions of time and
of of the past and of kind
of spirituality and and
mythology all at once.
Next slide.
And I'll talk
a little bit about this, when we
have some, I'll decode some of them.
We have this kind of spiritual
kind of ghost of a rattlesnake that
moves across in the center.
We have the figure of the
wizard from the movie, the 1978
movie The Wiz.
All of these in some ways speaking
towards this idea of
kind of a collapse of
visual styles and a collapse
of
renderings of kind of spirituality,
but also renderings of history
and kind of documentation.
But also that's kind of collapsed
temporality. Next slide.
I'm going to move through a little
bit faster because I realize I'm
taking some time, but I wanted to
bring up this idea that one of the
biggest kind of main points in
the work and one of the main kind of
threw lines through is this idea of
the mission system.
So what we have is we have these
figures, usually the natives
or at war with
it, kind of different kind of
factors of the Spanish army and
also depicting the kind of
Fryer's of the mission system
in a series of kind of matrix like
flips and kicks and a kind of
superpower throwing God to
energy at native people and
then defending that.
I liked we talked
when we talked when I talked to
Umar, we talked a little bit about
this idea of the mission system,
but also the kind of mission
projects.
So for a long time in California,
there was a serious
assignment that was given to fourth
graders in which they would kind of
do research on different missions
across California.
And they would make these renderings
and they would make these kind of
with kind of two
toothpicks kind of built out
versions of the missions.
This program has stopped because
it seemed to kind of really
whitewash and and really kind of
avoid the actual dark history of the
mission system, which was very
much about kind of which included
enslavement and through violence
towards native population of
Southern California.
But I like within
within Umar's work and within
the series, you have this kind of
accepting
of the mission
system and that how a child
would render it. So this child is
rendering of the missions, but it's
imbued with the violence of their
actual history simultaneously.
Next slide.
Umar works a lot in turn of phrases,
we have Junipero Serra, we
have Sara.
This is both a figure, a reference
to the Spanish
friar, but also
to Richard Sara, the painter.
We also have an El Camino and
that El Camino being both the car
and also the Royal Road,
the 600 mile road connecting
the twenty one Spanish missions
throughout California.
Next slide.
We also have make a man
in referencing a kind of Kool-Aid
man, but also referencing the
beverages made from a dried
floral of your maika and
hibiscus flowers breaking through
this wall of gold bricks.
Next slide.
And we also have these kind of
mythic figures and cartoon and
figures pulled from different
sources and applied to this kind of
historic battle.
Next slide.
We have Silver Surfer from Marvel
in this case, Mama speaks
of him as actually a beacon
of good or a beacon of power.
We also have this bear with lasers
shooting of a zine's taken from
the arcade game or
the kind of arcade box that
Space Invaders, which he has taken
and now implanted on onto this
battle.
Next slide.
And I want to end by talking about
this one section, which
is an F Anon,
a reference to Frantz Fanon,
but also a reference to
Q Anon in some ways,
or F anon being the only
Anon's that Umar
actually cares about, as he said it
to me.
And I think in looking
at Umar's work, I started to think
about or kind of go back to reading
some of the non whoo hoo
hoo was a kind of
who was a philosopher and writer on
colonization, decolonization
and the kind of long violence's and
ghosts of of those of
colonization across the
globe.
And I came across this phrase which
shows up in his book, The Wretched
of the Earth, in his section on
concerning violence, in which he
says the colonization, which sets
out to change the order of the
world, is obviously a program
of complete disorder.
And this disorder, which is very
much present within
Umar's work, is also something
that I think is very important
part of the work.
It is a disorder of history.
It is a fragmentation.
It is many stories happening all
at once.
It is a collision of many different
narratives and it is a repetition
of different narratives over time.
And in many ways, by looking at
Umar's work and by studying
these repetitions and reading
between the pieces, we begin to
understand this repetition and we
begin to understand these long
effects, these long violences.
In some ways, it is an attempt to
rewrite, but also as a
way to understand.
So with that will now be getting
to answer some of your questions.
I think we can open up for questions
if anyone has any.
I'm going to check the chat right
now to see
bear with me for a second.
Oh, I have a question really fast
from someone, which is
can you speak about Umar's
alternative name, frohawk two
feathers? You know, where it comes
from and what it means.
Yes. So it comes from
there's a story which is that he
comes from a couple of different
places.
But really, I think the important
thing to remember or to kind of
focus on it, it was it was this idea
of creating an anonymous artist.
So he wanted to create
a moniker that would kind of put
himself back and he would kind of
disconnect from the work and kind of
create this mystery around it.
And as I mentioned, it's really kind
of a continuation.
Even now, though, sometimes present
himself as Umar Rashid parentheses
(Frohawk Two Feathers) to kind of
distance himself or to kind of place
that as to acknowledge
the moniker, but also that he's
kind of moved beyond it.
Do we have any more questions?
Oh, I have a question from Lisa.
Lisa, I'm going on I'm going to ask
you to unmute.
So, Lisa, you should be able to.
There we go.
OK.
Yes, a couple of technical
questions.
It said that
when you were showing the piece, it
said that it was oil and
mixed media on
what is what is the surface
that is big enough
for this one, I believe is canvas.
Let me see if I have it written.
It should be canvas.
I believe Acambis, but that does
bring up a good point, which is
those kind of questions, the
materials is really important,
especially to Mark, who's
often kind of also
used to
kind of canvas that he's dipped in
kind of tea and coffee
to create this kind of older effect,
but also to reference these kind
of materials
that were kind of used and
distributed and sent
around using exploited,
exploited labor and kind of enslaved
people also.
So there's this kind of idea, this
obsession with the material also
tying into everything else.
Any other questions?
Lisa, you have one more question.
Yeah, you mentioned
that the that he
creates kind of a whole
literature around his work.
When you see the exhibit is
there is there is
a long description or how
is it incorporated in somewhere?
So so there's a short description
with the exhibition.
But for this part of this this
part of his series, which is still
kind of which is still ongoing,
the kind of California series,
it is still kind of writing out.
So there will actually be a kind of
epilog
coming sometime soon that
will have a continuation of this
narrative. And the written
material should may live
with that. But sometimes the
material exists
and is available and sometimes it
just is for for.
To Kim.
OK, well, with that, that's perfect
timing. It's one o'clock.
Thank you so much for taking the
time. And again, I really
would recommend coming by
the Hammer Museum if you can.
I want to say two quick things
before we leave,
which I've written down.
Give me a second.
Which is that a.
We have Umar will be leading an
online art making workshop
geared towards university students,
but open to anyone on Monday,
May 17th, at 7:00 p.m.
in the workshop, participants will
learn about his work and then create
a drawing or map project
that envisions a utopian outcome of
historic events.
The program is called A Malleable
History and Art Making
Workshop with Umar Rashid.
And it's happening on Monday, May
17th. And I'm going to attach in
the in the chat there's a link to
this program, which I would highly
recommend.
Also, Umar has a an
exhibition aside from the hammer up
at Transformative Arts L.A.
and downtown L.A., which we would
recommend checking out.
Thank you so much for joining this
afternoon's lunchtime art
talk.
Special thanks to Bank of America
for presenting Made in L.A.
20 20 aversion to support
programs like this and future
programs. We invite you to become a
hammer member or donate to the
museum by giving to a visiting
us at Hammer Forum UCLA
to use the support.
Be sure to join us next week for
lunchtime hour talks where Made in
L.A. 20 20 Assistant Curator
of performance
ikechukwu Onyewuenyi
will present on Justin
Lucroy, which will be really great.
So thank you guys all and see you
guys next week.