Afro-Futurism in the NW: An exhibit by Rubin Quarcoopome

Join us for opening night of Rubin Quarcoopome’s three month solo exhibition at Black & Tan Hall exploring the intersection of Afrofuturism and Pacific Northwest culture. The exhibition will run through April 13th.

“Selfie Series” is an artistic exploration created by Rubin Quarcoopome that began in 2024 as a way for the artist to heal from sorrow. The pieces utilize portraiture and collage as a medium to connect to deeper psychological experiences of anxiety, sadness, and growth. They lean heavily into Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism. Some pieces play with the metatextual quality of arms pulling the pieces of a portrait together, while others explore the surrealism of fingers as wings grasping at growth. All lean into the artist’s Ghanaian background, with the piece, “forwards…always forwards” referencing Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s slogan, “forwards ever, backwards never”.

This series is a continuation of the artist’s obsession with telling Black-centered stories, and love of making the ordinary weird and the weird ordinary. As an emerging artist in Seattle, Rubin Quarcoopome continues to grow his technical and creative skills telling complex stories in his images. His work has been featured at institutions like the Bellevue Arts Museum, KEXP, Bumbershoot, and the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. In 2022, he was honored as an Artist Trust Grantee for their 2022 Grants for Artists' Progress initiative. He has been published in spaces like Blank Space's Fairy Tales and Arte Noir’s Depth of Field. He continues to create new work in the Seattle area.