Obedience by Hosea Benjamin
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: photography
Dimensions: 20 x 28 in
Edition production year: 2022
Edition of 10
Price: $380.00 USD
Status: available
Obedience begins in stillness, where the whisper lives. Not blind, but brave—it sketches dreams in dust, measures twice, and lays each beam with care. Planning is faith with a blueprint, a vision grounded in patience. To build what storms cannot break—a structure shaped by trust, anchored deep in purpose.
Why collect this work?
A metal bucket obscures the seated figure’s head while a phone remains visible in his hand, making obedience appear less like passivity than a conflict between concealment and attention.
- Benjamin describes his practice as using portraiture and symbolism to examine memory, identity, and culture. In this work, an everyday container becomes the central symbolic interruption of the portrait.
- The photographed figure leans into a corner, one hand raised beside the bucket and the other holding a phone. His exposed torso remains highly legible while expression and eye contact disappear. The catalogue title, Obedience, frames this divided posture without identifying whom or what he obeys.
- The documented photographic medium fixes an improbable arrangement as a composed event. Tight framing and the plain setting concentrate attention on the contrast between the bucket’s hard geometry and the body’s bent pose.
- For collections examining how photographs construct identity, the pairing of a withheld face with a visible personal device makes anonymity coexist with a trace of contemporary self-presentation.
About the Artist
Hosea Benjamin
Hosea Benjamin is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: photography. Based in Lekki, NG.
Nationality: Nigerian
My work explores memory, identity, and culture through Afrography, a philosophy I created to document African stories with depth and intention.
