Ethiopia

Cleveland-based African American artist Reverend Albert Wagner created spiritual art as a way of self-healing. Wagner’s bold colors and geometric forms evoke the aesthetic and folk art traditions of African ritual objects. Referencing the artist’s cultural ancestry, Ethiopia depicts stylized, mask-like figures of royalty and piety. The crowned queen at the center of the composition weeps for the uncrowned figure at the right edge of the picture plane, for he has not yet realized God’s omnipotence. Deeply invested in Christianity as a means of redemption from past transgressions, Wagner believed in a miraculous interconnection between art-making and devotion.