QAnon Shaman

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Daniel Edwards’s bust of the so-called QAnon Shaman, Jake Angeli, stands as a darkly satirical response to the events of January 6, 2021—a day the artist refers to as a “black day” in American history. Through
this work, Edwards seeks to confront the absurdity and menace embodied by one of the most visually recognizable figures from the U.S. Capitol attack.
 

Rather than replicate the defiant and gleeful expression captured in widely circulated photographs of Angeli during the riot, Edwards instead draws from somber jailhouse images to portray a more subdued
and introspective figure. This shift in tone is central to the artist’s reinterpretation: from performative agitator to a cautionary symbol of delusion and misdirection.
 

Edwards views Angeli as a misguided mascot of extremist ideology—his flamboyant appearance, including face paint and appropriated Native American imagery, designed to entertain and provoke. In response, Edwards infuses the sculpture with irony and critique: replacing Angeli’s chest tattoos—associated with white nationalist iconography—with a cartoon cow, a pointed reference to the subject’s theatrical self-presentation and a visual pun that reduces the figure to caricature.
 

Painted entirely in black, the sculpture is both a memorial and a rebuke—marking the gravity of the Capitol insurrection while satirizing the cult of personality that surrounded its participants. In Edwards’s hands, the QAnon Shaman becomes a symbol not of power, but of folly—a figure cast in stark contrast to the seriousness of the event he helped define.