Adama Delphine Fawundu
Mami Wata at Wajai River, Pujehun, Sierra Leone, 2017
Estimated Value: $1,750

Archival pigment print
17 x 22 inches
Framed
Edition 1/5
Signed, verso
Donated by the artist.

I can trace my family’s history several generations back to a small island off the coast of Sierra Leone, West Africa named Mano. This makes me curious about the spiritual, cultural, and ideological pre-colonial ways of being that were disrupted by voluntary immigration, colonialism, and distorted within the African Diaspora through oppressive systems stemming from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

My understandings of family cultural traditions have always been a merge between traditional Mende beliefs and Westernized values.  Family gifts of colorful batik fabrics handmade by my deceased Grandma Adama and her daughter Mary sustained my connection to my ancestral home. Over the past years I’ve been obsessing over patterns and layers in my practice and have incorporated these fabrics into my works. My obsession stems from an inner desire to trace layers of complex and distorted histories, and uncover personal and universal cultural patterns that are present within myself and the African Diaspora. Although it is impossible to make perfect sense out of the pure pre-colonial identities living within my psyche, I persist on this never ending journey using myself as the main character in most of my works.

In my most recent installation, The Sacred Star of Isis and Other Stories, I created an environment manifesting conversations between African deities and the diaspora. These deities have shape shifted and traveled throughout space and time, while also existing in the true world, the world that we humans do not have full access to. This understanding gives me the freedom to create various iterations of these beings as they interfere, interact, intersect and confront social and cultural ways of the African diasporas past, present, and future.

This photograph was taken in my grandmother's home town of Pujehun, Sierra Leone, West Africa.

About the Artist:
Adama Delphine Fawundu

Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photo-based visual artist  and visual consultant 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 were 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 participated in artist residencies at BRIC Workspace, The Center for Book Arts, the Penumbra Foundation and the African Artist Foundation (Nigeria). Ms. Fawundu was 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 by Brooklyn Museum of Art; 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.

Website: delphinefawundu.com
Facebook: /delphinefb
Instagram: @adamadelphine
Twitter: @andshedontstop