Gathering Together / Adama Delphine Fawundu

This September, Art@Bainbridge, the Museum’s gallery space in downtown Princeton, reopens with an exhibition of works by the Brooklyn-based artist Adama Delphine Fawundu. Born in the United States to a Mende father from Sierra Leone and a Bubi mother from Equatorial Guinea, Fawundu seeks to link past and present by embodying feminine African deities, inserting herself into the archive of Black history, and celebrating the transmission of cultural knowledge by her female forebears. Combining photographic processes and ancestral fabric design techniques, she creates works that explore the significance of hair, cotton, and water as symbols of the legacy of colonialism. At the same time, she celebrates how these materials have been transformed by individuals who are part of the creative flowering of the African diaspora. Fawundu additionally works as a documentary photographer and writer, a capacity in which she, with Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, coauthored the inaugural volume of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.

In a recent conversation between Fawundu and the exhibition’s curator, Beth Gollnick, the artist expanded upon the influence of female elders on her work, the symbolism of the folk deity Mami Wata, and the ways in which forging connections—across cultures, continents, and moments in history—underpins her practice.

She reflects:

Just as I’m thinking about personal family lineage, I think about the larger connection between Africa and its diaspora. The violence of slavery and colonialism was meant to annihilate and suppress people’s rich ancestries. However, our bodies hold on to significant ancestral memories that live on. I see this in the diaspora through expressions of language-making, intelligence, and cultural expression.