PENUMBRA WORKSPACE PROGRAM | NYC | 2020
Adama Delphine Fawundu
Adama Delphine Fawundu uses photography to explore the spiritual, cultural, and ideological pre-colonial ways of being. Her most recent installation, The Sacred Star of Isis and Other Stories created an environment manifesting conversations between African deities and the diaspora. At the Penumbra Foundation, Fawundu will produce a project I Am Nomoli Am I consisting of large-scale self-portraits for her next solo exhibition. Fawundu’s extensive ongoing research into African Diasporic cultures and in particular beauty, masks, identity and adornment, among other themes, excited the jury and we look forward to seeing what Fawundu produces.
–Odette England (Artist & Educator, Member of the 2020 Jury).
Image © Adama Delphine Fawundu. Courtesy of the artist.
“[… ] 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, the African Diaspora, and the larger human experience. 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. [ …]”
Adama Delphine Fawundu is photographer and visual artist born in Brooklyn, NY to parents from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. With over fifteen years experience working as a photographer, Fawundu enhanced her studio practice and completed her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2018. In recognition of her artistic practice, Ms. Fawundu received the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Award, was named one of OkayAfrica’s 100 Women making an impact on Africa and its Diaspora and included in the Royal Photographic Society’s (UK) Hundred Heroines, in 2018. Ms. Fawundu’s other awards include, New York Foundation of the Arts Photography Fellow, Brooklyn Art Council Grant, Open Society Foundation Community Fellow, the Brooklyn Historical Society Community Initiative Grant, BRIC Workspace Artist-in-Residence. Ms. Fawundu has exhibited internationally, with solo shows in 2019 at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and Crush Curatorial gallery in Chelsea, NYC. Ms. Fawundu’s works can be found in the private and public collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Historical Society, The Norton Museum of Art, Corridor Art Gallery, The David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland and The Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
