C U R R E N T E X H I B I T I O N
For Mama Adama Hymns and Parables, 2022
Archival Inkjet, Cyanotype, UV Reactive Inks, oil sticks, acrylics, Lace fabric
from, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Raffia from Sierra Leone, Copper, copper leaf
Overall: 97.50 x 97.50 in
INQUIRE
Adama Delphine Fawundu
When The Water Sings
September 7 - November 2, 2024
Opening Reception: Sat, Sept 7, 2024, 2-5pm with artist walkthrough
EUQINOM Gallery is thrilled to announce "When The Water Sings," the first solo exhibition of Adama Delphine Fawundu with the gallery. The exhibition will run from September 7 to November 2, 2024, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 7, 2024, from 2-5 PM, featuring an artist walkthrough.
Adama Delphine Fawundu, celebrated for her profound exploration of identity, history, and diaspora, presents a collection of new works developed over the past four years. This exhibition encapsulates Fawundu's rich artistic journey blending personal and collective narratives with ancestral heritage and contemporary discourse.
Scholar Niama Safia Sandy eloquently captures the essence of Fawundu's work: “Adama Delphine Fawundu’s work is about finding ways to connect with her kin – a group not merely confined to those who share a direct common ancestor but an expansive definition inclusive of the many who descend from the dispersed, the stolen, those for whom the violence, and opportunity wrought by the sea is at once a specter and a fact of everyday life.”
A highlight of the exhibition is the centerpiece "For Mama Adama Hymns & Parables." In these large-scale hanging works, Fawundu manifests her grandmother's presence, incorporating hand-dyed and batik Garra fabrics from Mama Adama's thriving textile business in Sierra Leone. These pieces are created from large film negatives and positives through labor-intensive, camera-less photographic processes. Reflecting on her process, Fawundu states, “So much of this work is about creating new patterns and new languages while activating my body and ancestral memory. My process includes allowing my body to move intuitively as it performs and makes gestures through these camera-less photographic processes.” The completed pieces incorporate a mélange of materials and techniques such as photo lumens, cyanotypes, screen printing, mixed media on Guinea Brocade textiles, and cotton paper. The materiality of the work and the layered compositions speak to the complex nature of identities and the multifaceted connections between the African continent and its diaspora.
The exhibition also features a selection of self-portraits, including "Ngewo Whispers." In this work, Fawundu occupies ghostly sites that bore witness to events of the African diaspora, such as Savannah, GA. Dressed in a bright blue dress and wearing cowries in her hair, she captures herself amidst a verdant setting. This scene situates the artist's body as a bridge between the human and more-than-human worlds, threading a connective strand of exchange between the energetically active space of nature and the material structures of history. In "Black like Blue in Argentina" and "Oxum at Eko," Fawundu generates connective threads of exchange between the magical space of nature and the material structures of history. Inhabiting colonial architecture, wooded forests, balls of cotton, and her childhood hairdo of the crescent curl, she reformulates spaces of positivity and empowerment in the shadows of cultural annihilation and historical violence.
In "For Mama Adama," Fawundu appropriates motifs from her grandmother's fabrics, transforming them into patterns of exploration. Using textiles, papers, and various photographic processes, she examines the relationship between materiality and identity. Reflecting on her connection, Fawundu writes, “For Mama Adama is a spiritual conversation between myself and my grandma Adama, who passed away in 1997. Inspired by her Garra textile business in Pujehun, Sierra Leone, I use her 50-year-old textiles to generate the negatives and positives for my prints. By combining these processes, I create new patterns and languages, activating body memory and ancestral consciousness. This work explores the complex nature of identity and reproduction, awakening the radical imagination to dynamically express who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.”
The "For the Ancestors at Malaga Island" series honors the legacy of the inhabitants of Malaga Island in Maine, a fishing community of African and European descent forcibly removed by the state in 1912. Communicating with that ancestral energy and earth, Fawundu made a series of monoprints on silver gelatin prints using photographs and organic materials from Malaga Island.
In each of these works from "When The Water Sings," Fawundu explores the symbolic depths of water and hair, weaving narratives that confront historical traumas and celebrate the power in cultural endurance. Water serves as a life force and a portal between the past, present, and future, highlighting the symbiotic nature between humans and the environment. Hair represents DNA, indigenous intelligence, and ancestral memory. Through these symbols, Fawundu reimagines and glorifies the strength of her identity, culture, and network of kin. Additionally, she delves into how indigenous knowledge can be harnessed to activate our radical imaginations for equitable and sustainable futures.
Adama Delphine Fawundu's work is a testament to the power of art in connecting the past and present, the individual and collective, and the material and spiritual. Her exploration of identity, history, and diaspora offers a rich and nuanced perspective on the complex nature of our shared human experience.
W O R K S
A B O U T T H E A R T I S T
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and visual artist of Mende, Bubi, and Krim descent born in Brooklyn, NY. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book, MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. She is a 2024 Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Fine Arts. Her awards include New York Foundation for The Arts Photography Fellowship (2016) and the Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant (2018), and a 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition finalist. She was commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory to participate in the 100 Years|100 Women Project/The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium (2019-2021). Her works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Princeton University Museum, Princeton, NJ; The Petrucci Family Foundation of African American Art, Asbury, NJ; The Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Springs, FL; The David C. Driskell Art Collection, College Park, MD; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; and a number of private collections. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.
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