Ben Jones, 198 Gallery (1994)

So looking at Jones’s work becomes a fascinating exercise in understanding and observing so0me of the ways in which the aesthetics and symbolism of West African (primarily Yoruba) spirituality have always been a clearly discernible part of Black culture in the Americas. By far the most striking example of this is Jones’s 1990 work, Shango Wallpaper Series #1 #2 #3. Each of these three mixed media drawings features the central motif of the two-headed axe carried by Shango, the Yoruba god of lightening and thunder. Shango is frequently depicted as a fierce, warrior-like deity and the fearsome looking axe is characterised as an unambiguous weapon of awesome potential. However, in his Shango Wallpaper Series, Jones calmly but firmly takes the axe and re-presents it as a powerful and almost sensual symbol made stronger by the attendant images of snakes, eyes, fish and birds. And instead of the axe being a harsh monochromatic image, Jones imbibes it with a rich, (again, almost sensual) fleshy red.

Expanding on a theme that has consistently run through his work, Ben Jones takes Black men as the subject of this new series of work. Jones is keen, Jones is anxious, to engage in the process of rescuing Black men from the emotional, political, social, economic and spiritual scrap heap that the wider society has designated as being the appropriate home for them. One day, any day, spent in cities such as New York confirms the suspicion that Black men have been conspicuously singled out for brutal and dehumanising treatment by white America. In turn, the American media gleefully celebrates the ogreisation of Black men as pickpockets, peddlers, pimp, panhandlers…

Jones is attempting that most monumental and awesome of tasks – the re-humanisation of Black men. In his work he attempts nothing less than the spiritual celebrating of the Black male. In his own words, Jones states that this exhibition grows out of his “belief that Black men need to be spiritually celebrated in a modern society that frequently views them as ‘predators or negative forces.’”…

The full version of the above text, “In the Spirit” written by Eddie Chambers was published in the catalogue to accompany the exhibition Ben Jones: In the Spirit, 198 Gallery, London, 1994