Umar Rashid

A conversation with Los Angeles-based artist Umar Rashid, who blends historical research with world-building. Umar’s practice -- which includes painting, sculpture and writing -- engages with colonial history, global interconnections, and alternative historical narratives, focusing on the period from 1648 to 1880. His work often incorporates elements of time travel and cosmic exploration. In this episode, Alayo and Umar discuss his upbringing on the South Side of Chicago in an artistic family, a recent exhibition he curated of Robert Colescott’s work at BLUM Gallery in LA, and the influence of figures such as Frantz Fanon and Federico Fellini on his practice.

This special season focuses on the themes which are at the heart of Alayo’s upcoming book, 'Reframing Blackness: What’s Black About History of Art?', which unpacks the relationship between Blackness and “Western” art history through the lenses of: Museums, the curriculum, feminist art movements, muses and exhibitions. In this season Alayo will speak to artists who re-think, reposition and reframe Blackness and Black figures in this context.

Pre-Order Reframing Blackness here.

Keep up with us:

Umar Rashid: @frohawktwofeathers

Alayo Akinkugbe: @ablackhistoryofart @alayoakinkugbe