Art

Frohawk Two Feathers

Frohawk Two Feathers is a man at the nexus of many truths. On one hand, he’s an alchemist of visual art who turns dull history into golden narratives rich with beautiful subversion. On the other, he’s a performance artist who experiments with music, poetry and alter egos, including the psychedelic sexpot Kent Cyclone. Then there’s Umar Rashid, the mastermind behind it all who percolates the creativity that keeps his many artistic endeavors running.As a visual artist, the Lincoln Heights resident creates evocative illustrations and paintings of fictional aristocrats that take stylistic cues from post-colonial era portraiture. These colorful works — which glean the outsider-art aesthetic of murals and public art — explore the intricacies of race, the malleability of class and the fragility of how history is constructed. Although his characters are fictional — some are absurd inhabitants of the imagined country of Frengland — they are abstractions of a real ruling class that present a visual dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed.

“He is constantly redefining himself and therefore redefining the traditional idea of the artist as someone who makes work solely to be exhibited,” says Heather Taylor of Taylor De Cordoba, the gallery exhibiting his work in 2010. “His whole life is really his art.”

Whether he’s challenging expectations with his personas or rewriting history in his paintings, Frohawk embodies the peripatetic Los Angeles art scene, where genre-obliteration reigns supreme and one medium is never seems enough.

Brand X: What’s the meaning behind ‘Frengland’ and the revisionist history you present in your illustrations and paintings?
Umar Rashid: Frengland is a place I created that presupposes that 18th century England and France never were at war with each other and that they merged into one huge, unstoppable colonial empire. Imagine all the countries they conquered put together. They’d put a flag in most of the world. [For a recent New York show] I made 10 large portraits of people directly and indirectly involved in the 50 Years War (1742-1790), between Frengland of Francis III and numerous belligerents.

Brand X: How would America fit into this picture? We’d never colonize like that, right?

Rashid: Ha. Yeah. Let’s not even talk about Iraq.

Brand X: You also keep a menagerie of personas. There’s Kent Cyclone, the saucy nouveau-griot who spouts truth on Silver Lake stages. Then there’s your “Friday Night” concept album, which extols the activity of a night on the town. Sometimes actors and performance artists can feel spread too thin by having multiple identities. In what ways have you experienced a loss or complication of your own identity?

Rashid: My father was an actor, so I grew accustomed to seeing him as many different people. I would see him fall in love or die on stage over and over again. It put the seed in my head. But sometimes I feel a little spread thin. I’ve been out around town and someone will yell, “Hey, Frohawk!” at me, and it’s at that moment that I, Umar, have to reconcile with it.

Brand X: Music plays an important role in your personas. What are you experimenting with now?

Rashid: I’m writing a treatment for a folk album I’m working on with an old friend, tentatively titled “Crocodile Company.” It’s about a Frenglish soldier in the Compagnie Crocodile who comes back to his island homeland after years of wars to find his town overrun with brigands and his sister kidnapped. He is then elected by the townspeople to exact Rambo-style revenge on the thugs.

Brand X: You’re pretty busy — and you and your wife have a kid on the way too.

Rashid: Soon you’ll see a golden light coming from Lincoln Heights. That means I’ve become a dad.

Brand X: Your greatest work of art?

Rashid: For sure.

Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / For The Times.
Painting, titled “Amir” of Sakamoto, Daigoro, Japanese Ambassador to Frenglish Occupied Ottoma and Leader of the Clandestine Yellow Dragon Society, Istanbul, by Frohawk Two Feathers. Courtesy Taylor De Cordoba.

By Drew Tewksbury

from L.A. Times’ magazine Brand X Innovators 2009 issue

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