BORN inFAMOUS is the latest suite of paintings utilizing Pecou’s alter ego as “art celebrity”. These works consider and challenge art-world politics and issues of the black male body. Audacious, confrontational, and witty, the work appropriates the lexicons of celebrity, magazine, and fine art culture to facilitate conversations that allow the viewer to examine these traditionally separate worlds and see where they connect.

In BORN inFAMOUS, Pecou ups the ante with the swagger of a Blaxploitation anti-hero, battling a system that prides itself on tokenism and flavor-of-the-month icons. The paintings in this series cite the work and words of figures like Melvin Van Peebles and Andre 3000 (of the hip-hop group Outkast), whose ability to stay politically and socially current in their work make them relevant to a contemporary audience as they recalibrate their work and careers across genres and styles. Pecou continues to implant himself into the discourse surrounding international art politics using publications from across the globe to reinvent himself as an “artist to be reckoned with”.