Fahamu Pecou

Whirl Trade is a dizzying cultural exchange where exported ideas of African identity are misinterpreted across borders. Just as African American hip hop artists hold the microphone on an international stage, Fahamu Pecou paints his hypermasculine alter ego onto magazine covers to achieve the same platform. However, his microphone hangs limp to critique the commodified stereotype of young black men being projected by media. Equally misconstrued are American generalizations of African culture, creating a whirl of fallacy around international black identity. Fahamu exaggerates such typecast generalizations, challenging his contemporaries to project more positive images of African American men while pushing the audience to reevaluate their own expectations.