LONDON.- Acclaimed artist Umar Rashid (also known as Frohawk Two Feathers) presents the third instalment in his ambitious twelve-part narrative series, The Epoch of Totalitarianism. This new chapter, titled The Civil Wars and the Uncivilized Wars (See Power), continues Rashid’s ongoing reimagining of global history through the lens of his richly constructed fictional universe, the Frenglish Empire.
In this latest instalment, Rashid turns his focus to the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars, refracted through his signature blend of historical fiction, hip-hop lyricism, and pop-cultural commentary. Set across Genova, Cape Town (reimagined as Francisabad del Sud), Goa, Hong Kong, and Trafalgar (Cádiz, Spain), the work follows the exploits of the formidable Admiral Lord Honoré Nelson—a decorated naval commander in service of the Revolutionary Council.
While Nelson’s reputation as a master tactician precedes him, his true role straddles a moral divide: both liberator and pirate. His naval fleet, representing the commercial interests of the Frenglish East and West India Companies, enforces power through ruthless precision—devastating all who resist. Rashid explores this duality, probing the contradictions between revolutionary ideals and imperial ambition, between freedom and domination.
As the so-called “civilized wars” of Europe devolve into “uncivilized wars” across the rest of the world, a new technological force emerges: the Mysorean Rocket. Developed in South Asia and later replicated in Europe by Colonel “Burna Bill” Congreve, this weapon becomes a metaphor for the accelerating spread of violence, innovation, and empire.
Through intricate drawings, narrative paintings, infused with wit, rhythm, and historical remix, Rashid reveals how lofty ideals of liberty and equality decay into conquest and control. His world burns with a crimson glare—a vivid allegory for the cycles of power that define both past and present.
With The Civil Wars and the Uncivilized Wars (See Power), Umar Rashid continues to expand his complex mythology of resistance and empire, weaving together the global and the personal, the factual and the fantastical, in his uniquely compelling visual storytelling.
Umar Rashid was born in 1976 in Chicago, Illinois, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He earned his BA at Southern Illinois University in 2000.
For over twenty years, the Los Angeles-based artist has documented the complex, historical and episodic saga of a fictional world superpower – the Frenglish Empire. Between 1658 and 1880, the Frenglish rule a trans continental area comprised of dominions, protectorates and colonies including England, France, Turkey, India, Caribbean, Australia. Over the next two centuries, the Frenglish Empire engages in military endeavours, political intrigues, dynastic alliances and significantly, colonial exploits and enterprises that arise out of survivalist and ex pansionist imperial policies.
Across portraits, maps, flags, artefacts, vignettes and drawings and other visual remnants of an imagined empire and its multiple interactions, Rashid reveals pivotal events and the ever-changing fortunes of a lively array of protagonists, both elite and quotidian, all peculiar to a highly novel parallel universe. In this polyglot and multi-racial world of the mid 17th and late 19th centuries, Rashid collapses time, geography and the real-life dichotomies of race, class, gender, religion, sexuality and, power. His iconographic work synthesises comic culture, African cosmology, Egyptology, Classical mythology, Native American ledger art, hip hop, Persian miniature, Afrofuturism, grand history paintings and Renaissance portraiture. In remixing myriad histories – some recognisable and others esoteric including but not limited to Western European, African and Ottoman, Rashid offers a revisionist, forensic and often humorous panorama of the early and late Modern periods. His work challenges the legacies and linearities of im perial and colonial historiographies and their influence on the construction of modernity.
Recent exhibitions include: Seeing Is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gérôme, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar Museums, Doha, Qatar (group - 2024); who’s afraid of cartoony figuration?, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas TX, USA (group - 2024); Halfway to Sanity, The Pit Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA, USA (group - 2024); 30 Years of New Image Art, Los Angeles CA, USA (group - 2024); The Undiscovered Genius of the Niger Delta. An Unexpected Journey Into Chaos....1799, Tiwani Contemporary, Lagos, Nigeria (solo - 2023); If there’s been a way to build it, There’ll be a way to destroy it....L’époque Totalitaire part one, Almine Rech, London, UK (solo - 2023); Kagetora’s dream in the time of Sakoku. (Reds and Blues). Part 1, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles CA, USA (solo - 2023); MoMa PS1, New York, US (2022); Cokkie Snoei, Rotterdam, NL (2022); Almine Rech, Paris, France (2022); Half Gallery, New York, USA (2021); Blum & Poe, LA, USA (2021); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA in partnership with The Huntington, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, USA, (2020); University of Arizona, Tucson, USA (2018); University of Memphis, Memphis, USA (2017); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, USA (2014); Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, USA (2013); the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, USA (2013); the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, USA (2013) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, USA (2012) .
His work is held in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town; The Brooklyn Museum; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Nevada Museum of Art; and El Espacio 23, among others.
