Artist Reimagines Hartford, World History

Contemporary society is so complicated that sometimes it seems nothing anybody does really makes that much of a difference. There was a simpler time, hundreds of years ago, when a man could gather 100 friends with horses, bows, arrows and spears and go out and change the world.

Umar Rashid lives in 21st-century Los Angeles. But his artistic alter ego, Frohawk Two Feathers, has his head in the past, in a world of conquerors, avengers, scheming aristocrats, battles, golden cities, good men with bad luck and bad men with good luck.

An intricately detailed and fully realized world of empire came out of Two Feathers’ head, onto paper and then onto canvas. Its most illustrious citizens — Bonnie Prince Johnnie, Lucretia the would-be queen, Neville the tragic hero, hot-headed Capt. Celso, corrupt King Henry, Demetria the fire witch — are now holding court in Wadsworth Atheneum’s MATRIX gallery.

The “Game of Thrones”-y world Two Feathers has imagined, in narrative and in a series of acrylic paintings, isn’t all that different from the history we all have heard in school. It just happens to people who aren’t real, who fought and died and lived for an empire that never existed. “The narrative is made up, but it’s the ‘same …, different day,’ ‘same person, different suit,’ nothing that hasn’t happened before,” he said.

(And what’s wrong with that? The museum catalog asks “Isn’t ‘truth’ in history a misnomer anyhow?”)

It’s fun to imagine a time capsule containing a copy of Two Feathers’ story. One thousand years from now, citizens of Hartford would believe they were descended from the Frenglish, citizens of a super-empire union of France and England who in 1791 laid seige to their state, called “Adriaensland.”

“Henry was nearing the fort and could see the glorius golden glow from the ziggurat that contained the storerooms of the Fort of Goode Hoepe. The locals called it Fort Fortune,” reads Two Feathers’ story about the battle over what, in the real world, is Hartford. “… The fort was a goldmine. Red Arm left half of his forces there to secure the riches and told the Toucouleur Army that they must march again, east to Fort Ferdinand and help get rid of the Dutch once and for all.”

The Hartford elements to Two Feathers’ story are new, created for the Atheneum show, but he began his revisionist-history art project in 2001. His job as a hookah salesman suddenly slowed down, so he would sit at work and write stories on invoice paper, and illustrate them with drawings made from highlighters, pens and white-out. “It was very cartoonish,” he said. Two Feathers said his narrative was inspired by his love for history and fascination with the creation and destruction of empires.

As his story developed, he met a gallerist and got his work into her gallery. His success there inspired him to flesh out his story and create more sophisticated artwork to go with it.

“It was all a big joke. It started out comedic. … I didn’t know it would catch on,” he said. “People started getting into the narrative. … Once I realized the immensity of the narrative I decided I could work on this for the rest of my natural life.”

Two Feathers’ scenario is both complex and ever-evolving: The Frenglish decorated their faces with coded tattoos and, in that historic year, they moved northward from New Amsterdam up the Fresh River with their sights set on Suckiaug, the heart of Adriaensland. Meanwhile, openly gay puppet ruler Bonnie Prince Johnnie spurned his chosen fiancee Lucretia, who in turn had Johnnie’s lover killed and embarked on a secret love affair with Supreme, a Yoruba prince-turned-Frenglish mucky-muck.

Two Feathers’ MATRIX gallery story takes place in “New Frengland” at the time when the Frenglish empire began its decline. “All empires decline in the same fashion … kind of like this one,” he said, laughing. “It’s starts out with something stupid. … Then they start overreaching. … Then they start treating their own people like s—.” The paintings, he said, are just allegorical. “What I am first and foremost is a storyteller,” he said.

One noteworthy element to Two Feathers’ narrative is that people of color and women are among the most powerful people among the Frenglish. Two Feathers is African-American. “I gave the women a lot of power because I love my mama,” he said. “She’s strong.”

FROHAWK TWO FEATHERS: MATRIX 170: ON ERRYTHANG (ON EVERYTHING) will be at Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main St. in Hartford, until Jan. 4. Details: www.thewadsworth.org.