Frohawk Two Feathers

Current Review(s)

Tales of Mzanzi

Frohawk Two Feathers at Stevenson in Cape Town

The American artist Frohawk Two Feathers stands in the middle of his exhibition, ‘The Edge of the Earth Isn’t Far From Here’, at Stevenson Gallery, unconsciously tugging at one of his dreadlocks. A woman, who has been acting as a self-appointed interlocutor at the walkabout, continues her seemingly endless enquiry into the painting A fashionable Xhosa and Khoi girls modelling the latest threads under the kissing the tree: 'But are you doing this for the American market? Because then they won’t understand it. I mean they are not going to know what a Xhosa or a Khoi is'.

Frohawk Two Feathers – he was born Umar Rashid in Chicago in 1976 – begins another attempt to satisfy the woman. He explains that the painting is a portrait of two girls he was once in love with at school. Their poses are modelled on a 1990s Chicago look, but they are part of his reimagining of the Cape Colony circa 1792, during the Frenglish Empire, a fictitious epoch that is a crucible of current and historical understandings and appropriations.

25 October 2011 - 25 November 2011

Listings(s)

'The Edge of the Earth Isn't Far from Here'

Frohawk Two Feathers at Stevenson in Cape Town

Through wildly imaginative and detailed drawings, Frohawk Two Feathers reimagines colonial history, using the fictional Empire of Frengland as the driving force in his global narrative. For The Edge of the Earth Isn't Far from Here, he has unearthed events in a Cape Colony of 1792, where a lone Frenglish garrison - unaware of recent shifts in power 'back home' - finds itself threatened by a Batavian invasion:

"Meanwhile back at the Cape Colony, all was business as usual. The lowborn military governor of the colony, Captain Didier Lamontagne, was biding his time there hoping for someone to come and relieve him so that he could 'go to the front' where he felt his administrative acumen and tactical genius would be better served. He was by no means hostile to the natives and was quite diplomatic with the neighbouring pastoral Khoi and the various Xhosa tribes to the east. He conducted trade with the Zulu and was even kind to the Boers who had lived in the colony before Frenglish occupation. However seemingly kind, he also dealt in slaves and turned a blind eye to 'less sympathetic' settlers who sought to exploit the land and its people for personal gain. This aspect of Didier was well noticed by the commander of his native auxillary corps, Daluxolo, or 'King Gorgeous' as he was affectionately referred to. Daluxolo was a member of the Mfengu tribe who wished to learn Frenglish military drill and tactics so that he could protect his tribe from rogue settlers, other Xhosa, and the encroaching Zulus from the north. His unit, the Force Fantastique, was ridiculed by the white soldiers of the Frenglish, but he continued to train and led his men well in battle.

One day in November, a slave ship carrying fresh slaves from the Gold Coast told Didier that the Frenglish Empire had been dissolved and that they had just passed a great armada of 100 warships flying the Batavian standard and heading this way …"

25 October 2011 - 25 November 2011