John Brown’s Bible. 2018

24 carat gold leaf on vintage  1800’s John Brown Bible cover
35 x 24 cm

John Brown’s Bible (2018)
From the Genesis Series

This work forms part of my Genesis series, an ongoing exploration of the entangled histories of Christianity, colonialism, and African spirituality. John Brown’s Bible is an early nineteenth-century Bible whose cover bears my handprint rendered in gold size and gold leaf — a gesture that fuses the sacred, the personal, and the political.

Across the wider series, I use my body — through hand and face prints on Bible pages — as both mark and witness. The work speaks to the complex legacy of Christianity in Africa and its diaspora: from the Bible’s use as a literal tool of enslavement and control, to its reinterpretation as a source of resistance, solace, and redemption.

There is both violence and healing embedded in this object. It reflects my own struggle with faith — raised Catholic, now agnostic — and how belief continues to shape and divide families and communities. The gold leaf evokes sanctity and reverence, yet also questions what has been sanctified: the suppression of Indigenous religions, philosophies, and ways of being.

John Brown’s Bible stands as both a memorial and a reclamation — confronting the weight of imposed faith while acknowledging the spiritual creativity through which African peoples reimagined and redefined it.