Dr. Fahamu Pecou is a renowned artist, scholar, and writer whose work explores Black masculinity, hip-hop culture, and the intersection of fine art and popular culture. He has exhibited his work internationally and is best known for his multimedia installation, Native Tongue/OGBE OYEKU. Pecou challenges viewers to confront the ways in which Black bodies have been represented, commodified, and exploited throughout history, while offering a new vision of Black masculinity that is grounded in tradition and contemporary culture.

We learned during the curation of the gallery that the Negro Digest was an actual publication. Negro Digest, also known as Black World, was a magazine that was first published in 1942 by John H. Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet magazines. The magazine was dedicated to providing a platform for Black writers, thinkers, and artists, and it quickly became a leading voice of the Black intellectual and cultural scene. Over the years, Negro Digest published the work of many notable writers and thinkers, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Baldwin.

Fun fact, the husband and wife curator team’s first date was to Dr. Fahamu Pecou’s exhibit at Emory University. The rest is history.