Victory in the Valley of Eshu

Jeff Donaldson was a co-founder of the AfriCOBRA group established in 1968. In their explicitly political and revolutionary work, the AfriCOBRA artists advocated a bold, unified, and distinctly African American aesthetic, one that would be immediately accessible and relevant to the daily lives of their viewers. Their approach to image making combined vibrant colors and rhythmic compositions with political subject matter to directly address the social and political concerns facing the African American community.

Interested in developing a Pan-African aesthetic, Donaldson draws on the religion and iconography of the Nigerian Yoruba people. Victory in the Valley of Eshu depicts Donaldson’s mother and father. His father holds a ritual wand topped with a double-axe, an implement associated with the Yoruba thunder deity Sango. His mother holds a six-pointed star that symbolizes Eshu, the deity of fate. Each point suggests a different path into the uncertain future that faced both Donaldson himself and the African American community as a whole during a period of violence and change. Reflecting the Yoruba belief in ancestor-deities, Donaldson pictures his parents watching over this crossroads guiding his path forward. In this work, Donaldson synthesizes African and African-American images in order to define a shared ancestral identity and foster an uplifting communal spirit.