“His multi-layered body of work re-articulates that history with a focus on the Black human subject and cultural artefacts. The African art objects he uses have a multi-dimensional nature, but whether they are symbols of traditional African cultural heritage or signifiers of Diaspora and memory, they are used to question notions of displacement and dispossession in contemporary society. While expanding the tradition of studio portraiture, he thoughtfully reclaims the framing of the past and puts it firmly in our contemporary world, a world in which authenticity and identity are fluid and never fixed.”

Claartje van Dijk (head of exhibitions Foam): "Foam is delighted that the jury has selected John Edmonds as the new winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award. This year marks the fifteenth edition of the Award, which started in 2007 and is an important part of Foam's mission to identify and support young talented artists. As a team the jury members united each of their individual cultural and professional backgrounds into selecting an outstanding artist. We look forward to working with John".

About John Edmonds

John Edmonds (b. 1989) is an American artist and photographer who first came to public recognition with his intimate portraits of lovers, close friends and strangers. He earned his MFA in Photography from Yale University and his BFA at the Corcoran School of Arts & Design. His work explores themes of identity, community and desire. Noted for his highly formalist photographs in which he focuses on the performative gestures and self-fashioning of young black men on the streets of America, his work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Columbus Museum of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, SFMoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum. In 2018, TIME Magazine listed his debut monograph, Higher, as one of the top 25 Photobooks of the year. Recent exhibitions include Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall at the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Photography at Simon Lee Gallery, God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin at David Zwirner and Family Pictures at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Residencies include: the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME; Light Work, Syracuse, NY; and the Banff Centre, Banff, AB. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and is on faculty at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts, NY. In 2019, he was included in the 79th Whitney Biennial. Edmonds is represented by Company Gallery.

Honourable mention

The jury is giving an honourable mention to the work of Guanyu Xu (CN) as runner-up. “Xu’s work tackles sensitive issues of homosexuality and queerness in both a Chinese and American context and does so with a highly personal and experimental approach.”