February 11, 2021
7 PM EST
Fawundu will share her latest series Sunsum in Mind, Body & Spirit and the Sacred Star of Isis as she discusses her process of decolonizing her mind while making art.
Adama Delphine Fawundu is photo-based visual artist born in Brooklyn, NY to parents from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. She received her MFA from Columbia University. Ms. Fawundu is a co-author/editor of the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. This book features over 100 women photographers of African descent from around the globe. Her most recent works investigates the spiritual, cultural, and ideological pre-colonial ways of being that was disrupted by voluntary immigration, colonialism, and distorted within the African Diaspora through oppressive systems stemming from the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Fawundu uses photography, video, sculpture and printmaking to create new trans-historical identities as she explores Afrofuturist ideas. Her most recent group exhibitions were on view at the Kunstverein Braunschweig (Germany), The Moody Center for Arts (Rice University) and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT). She was commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory and New York University to participate in the 100 Years 100 Women exhibition commemorating one century since the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Solo presentations of her work were recently on view at The Miller Theater at Columbia University, Hesse Flatow Gallery (Chelsea), Granary Arts (Utah), Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, and The African American Museum in Philadelphia. She has participated in artist residencies at BRIC Workspace, The Center for Book Arts, the Penumbra Foundation and the African Artist Foundation (Nigeria). Ms. Fawundu has been awarded grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and The Open Society Institute. Her works can be found in the the collections at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Historical Society, The Norton Museum of Art, The David C. Driskell Center (University of Maryland), The Petrucci Family Foundation and The Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Mrs. Fawundu’s works have been published in anthologies such as: Contact High: A Visual History of Hip Hop by Vikki Tobak, Africa Under the Prism: Contemporary African Photography from the Lagos Photo Festival by Joseph Gergel, ReSignifications: European Blackamoors, Africana Readings, Edited by Awam Ampka, Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840-Present by Dr. Deborah Willis. Her works has also been featured in publications such as Vogue, Surface Magazine, The New York Times, Time Magazine, The BBC and New York Magazine.
Support for Thursday Night Photo Talks is provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Artist fees for the Thursday Night Photo Talks have been underwritten by The Lillian F. and Jerome L. Sindler Fund for Visual Media.
