This spring, Melvin Edwards”™ large-scale sculpture, Asafokra, will be on view as part of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum”™s Main Street Sculpture program from April 27 to Sept. 5. Since its founding in 1964, The Aldrich has activated its grounds with public sculpture and outdoor installations. Free and open to the public, museum visitors can find Asafokra installed at 258 Main St. in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Asafokra denotes the artist”™s return to painted steel sculpture after working in the medium for roughly a decade. Explaining the sculpture, Edwards said, “It connects to the traditional society in Ghana, the Asafo society, the organization of younger men who are responsible to defend the community. The Asafo shrine complex is in the form of a fortress combined with human figures that are painted in symbolic or appropriate colors…” Paying homage to these traditions and colors, Edwards unites his abstract reductive forms with African history and ritual.
The exhibition of Asafokra marks the return of Edwards”™ work to The Aldrich”™s Sculpture Garden after 50 years.
Edwards was born in 1937 in Houston, Texas. He currently lives and works in Plainfield, New Jersey and New York”™s Hudson Valley.
