John Edmonds' Brooklyn Museum exhibition interrogates colonial collecting through African objects

John Edmonds' first institutional solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York examines the colonial legacy surrounding African art collection. Titled A Sidelong Glance, the show features photographs of masks and totems from the museum's holdings and private collections. Edmonds presents African sculptures donated by the Ralph Ellison estate, including Baule, Hemba and Senufo figures photographed against iridescent backdrops in 2019. The artist's research includes a folded newsprint poster reproducing Whose Hands? (2019) with 521 notes on Baule culture from Susan Vogel's Baule: African Art Western Eyes (1997) and Alain-Michel Boyer's Baule: Visions of Africa (2008). Works like Anatolli & Collection (2019) depict a shirtless Black man alongside African art objects, highlighting both homoerotic desire and historical Western ownership of Black bodies. The exhibition questions not only institutional collecting practices but also private acquisition, exploring how figures like Ellison lived with these objects. Edmonds previously focused on Black queer desire through street fashion and artistic communities, reframing Eurocentric art history. The exhibition remains on view through 8 August.