Balanced on an I-beam pedestal, Not So Easy (2019) features chain draped over a steel support. Foregrounding Melvin Edwards’s interest in what the curator Catherine Craft “the multivalent practical possibilities of … materials,” the work capitalizes on the conceptual implications of using chain as a sculptural element. Recalling the physical bondage of slavery, for Edwards, chains also honor his African blacksmith forebears and are a symbol of connection and continuing tradition. As Edwards expands, “Like a poet with words, you know more than one notion. The most common word in poetry is love. Chain is just a material in and of itself. The reason it was invented was to make a better rope. It was not invented for slavery or moving cars, though it was used at different times for each. It's the context of things, the environment which it was in, that has to be taken into account.”