Apollo in Irons (I need a new n**** for this black cloud to follow, 'cause while it's over me it's too dark to see...

Umar Rashid’s imagined character, Apollo, wears a white wig reminiscent of 18th-century nobility and his wrists are shackled with old-fashioned manacles. Despite being physically restrained, he stares out at the viewer defiantly from a composition closely cropped around his face. In his series It's Yours: Wars of the Frenglish Revolution and other Conflicts, Rashid, (who also calls himself Frohawk Two Feathers) gives us a glimpse into a fantastical world—an alternate version of history in which 18th-century France and England have joined forces to become an unstoppable colonial power that Rashid calls the “Frenglish Empire.” Rashid depicts characters and imagined scenes from this strange yet familiar world, focusing his skilled brush and imaginative vision on colonized peoples and places and endowing them with titles laced with lines from rap lyrics.