Umar Rashid takes a unique approach to the subject of of colonial history and it’s effects. By taking significant moments in history and changing the narrative, he leads you into a world where a different future is the reality. The narratives he presents leaves you with a wistfulness for “what could have been”.
In many ways his work is a fantasy, but as he weaves his stories with so much of actual history you’re left with the feeling that it might not be fantasy for much longer.
Umar Rashid:
The Undiscovered Genius of the Niger Delta. An Unexpected Journey Into Chaos Told From The Perspective Of Someone Who Wasn’t There. 1799
Rashid’s deep engagement with how history is retold, shared and experienced led him to become the cosmographer of his own fictional universe, chronicling the exploits of the Frenglish Empire around the globe in paintings, sculpture, moving-image and literature. The works are contextually grounded in the period of Western European expansionism during the 16th-19th centuries, and he imaginatively interferes with the formal accounts of what we know of these periods in his use of visual fabulation - a simultaeneous mix of historical and current day vernacular that references political, and socio-cultural phenomena, fantasy and speculative propositioning. The interplay works towards questioning the concept of free will: How do we as individuals and members of families and communities take responsibility for the construction of the narratives and conversations that structure and inform our experiences of the world? To what extent are we the true authors of our own destinies?
Excerpt from Tiwani Contemporary