Umar Rashid

Bio

Umar Rashid’s portraits, drawings, flags, maps, battle scenes, and other artifacts continue the long history of Frengland—an ongoing project he began working on in 2006. In Rashid’s history, the dates of the Frenglish Empire (1658-1880) roughly correspond to the actual English Civil War and the abolition of slavery in Brazil respectively. Fourteen years in the making and spanning almost 140 years of Frenglish time, Rashid’s global empire has developed a complex history, much like the trajectory of actual colonial enterprises. Similarly, his work references a panoply of cultures that collapses geography and time. Stylistically, Rashid alludes to Egyptian hieroglyphs, Native American hide paintings and ledger art, Persian miniature painting, and illustrated Spanish colonial manuscripts. His world is not guided by simplistic dichotomies of white and black, master and slave, captor and captive, but challenges viewers to consider the range of humanity involved in a global empire. The lengthy, sometimes humorous, titles of Rashid’s works often reference hip-hop song lyrics, urban expressions, and current events. The artist intentionally strives to bridge the gap between contemporary popular culture and “official” history. -Ellen Caldwell