DO or DIE: Affect, Ritual, Resistance

DO or DIE: Affect, Ritual, Resistance by Dr. Fahamu Pecou explores the intersections between African-based spiritual traditions and the political and societal violence against black male bodies in the US. 

Pecou positions these bodies within Ifá, a diasporic religion of the Yoruba of southwest Nigeria; here, where spirits are infinite, a healing alternative exists for slain black men—Martin, Medgar, Emmitt, Trayvon, and Michael among them—and their communities. Centered around his Egungun mask, Pecou uses paintings, drawing, photography, and video to depict the spirit’s journey, including its encounters with divinity and its invocation through the ceremonial Egungun dance. 

The Carlos Museum will present Pecou’s work alongside historical Yoruba masks and divination tools in its collection, illustrating the continuing practice of this tradition.

Pecou acknowledges the importance of African and African American history and culture to his work. “African spirituality, concepts, and philosophies allow us space and freedom to think about and see ourselves as whole and human. These ideals contradict the broken, tortured, and oppressed images of blackness that we find in the context of Western visual culture. It’s imperative to realize and to know that our history and our culture predates the enslavement of our ancestors as well as the history of our oppressors,” he argues. “There is a freedom in acknowledging that our ancestors were not ‘slaves,’ but a people who were violently and forcefully enslaved. That they had cities and schools, art, and culture that predate the European enlightenment by millennia. THIS is who we can be. THIS is who we are. "

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

Image: Fahamu Pecou. Procession for DO or DIE: Affect, Ritual, Resistance. Performance view, August 26, 2016, Charleston, SC. Credit: Kip Bulwinkle for Karson Photography.