“Edmonds created sculptures as an off-spring of Yves and the Ashanti sculpture based on his own akua ba, a term coined in West Africa that means “wooden child”. Traditional in form and contemporary in disposition, the off-spring fuse past and present into potent personalities from the artist’s own memories of childhood friends and relatives. Each akua ba is named and adorned in their own specific style and scarification, designed by the artist. In this work entitled Tribe, Edmonds is interested in the “diasporic family”, a term that in his own words ultimately connotes “lost children.” The use of gold has multiple meanings. At first impression, the artist’s use of gold could reference the gold trade and the same bodies that were used for forced labor and commerce. It could also pertain to its use in his most recent major body of work Father’s Jewels, that consider African sculpture as a gift left behind from ancestors in the transatlantic slave trade or the wisdom of the missing Black patriarch. In Mother/Child?!, Edmonds centers the Ashanti figure and reframes the maternal body as a metaphorical home–a place of comfort, distress and submission.” Family is such a complicated topic and it’s never easy. But I am grateful for art as a container for all the shit we get dragged through in this weird life. Speaking for all of those who know the messiness of our own families and communities. Remember that you are not a victim, but a conquerer 😌❤️ John Edmonds, One, 2022 Digital silver gelatin photograph 71h x 48w x 2d inches / 180.34h x 121.92w x 5.08d cm @companygallery @the_yvesdropper @artbasel