Begun at the height of the civil rights movement, in 1963—the year of the March on Washington and of President Kennedy’s assassination—Edwards’s Lynch Fragment Series responds to a legacy of oppression. While the series name explicitly refers to the history of violence toward African Americans in the United States, the sculptures’ individual titles often relate them to a person or place in Namibia or Zimbabwe. The welded steel forms evoke chains, locks, handcuffs, and farming equipment. Each sculpture, roughly the size of a human head, confronts the viewer face
to face.

Gallery label from

"Collection 1940s—1970s", 2019

Medium Steel
Dimensions 12 7/8 x 6 3/4 x 9 1/2" (32.7 x 17 x 24 cm)
Credit Purchase
Object number 243.1990
Department Painting & Sculpture

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