Pastiche Lumumba

Housing is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Pastiche Lumumba.

Vernacular Heraldic is Pastiche Lumumba’s debut New York solo exhibition. Within this body of work, Lumumba interrogates symbols traditionally used to signify belonging within subcultures and subverts them for the purpose of exploring the relationships of domination and submission they create. This work traces the phenomena of sports culture being filtered through the expansive zeitgeist of streetwear and internet culture and mutes the accompanying fetishism in a suspended moment of observation in order to re-examine it through the context of aesthetic masculinity and the significance of conventionality of power dynamics within its confines. It is a conceptual reckoning with expectations of normality and homogeneity within subgroups, interpolated through kink, which broadly and intentionally scrutinizes the notion of “fitting in” and what power relationships arise from its fetters: The heraldic modality of sadomasochism.

Pastiche Lumumba (b. 1988, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines cultural conventions and normalized power dynamics within the contexts of masculinity and Blackness. He has exhibited internationally as well as on the internet and his work has been featured in publications such as Art Papers, Mask Magazine and Rhizome. Lumumba is the founder of The LOW Museum of Contemporary Culture in Atlanta where he served as director and chief curator from 2013 to 2016. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.