By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton
Happy Advent, collectors, during this season of the mother & child. Today, we're introducing you to photographer and collector John Edmonds, who has a new show at the Brooklyn Museum. By juxtaposing African art's spiritual power with shirtless Black men, he explores possession and desire in works like "Whose Hands?" where several hands grasp at a mother and child sculpture. Raised a Baptist and inspired by religious art, the queer artist was also initiated into Ghana's Akan religion. Advent, week 2, makes John Edmonds our collector's tip of the week.Are you an artist? Are you a collector? If you like what you see each week, please invite a friend to subscribe to our periodic e-newsletter. You can also follow us weekly on Twitter, Facebook, or Soundcloud but only subscribers can vote for the Alpha Omega Prize. It is our annual recognition each November 1st of one artist's impact on religious dialogue in America.
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John Edmonds, Whose Hands?, 2019. Archival pigment photograph, 14 x 11 inches. Private Collection. © John Edmonds. |
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John Edmonds’s "Two Spirits" (2019) both haunts and seduces. In the photograph, a bare-chested man wears a Baga bird mask from Guinea. Behind him hangs an African kuba cloth. |