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Delphine Fawundu

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Adama Delphine Fawundu
Born1971
Brooklyn, NY
NationalityAmerican, Sierra Leonean
EducationStony Brook University - BA., Columbia University - MFA.
Known forPhotography, Interdisciplinarity
SpouseHoward Buford

Adama Delphine Fawundu (born 1971)[1] is a Sierra Leonean-American multi-disciplinary photographer and visual artist promoting African culture and heritage, a co-founder and author of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora[2] – a journal and book representing female photographers of African descent. Her works have been presented in numerous exhibitions worldwide. She uses multiple mediums to create works with themes about identity, utopia, decolonization, and stories of the past, present and future. She is a Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.

Biography

Adama Delphine Fawundu was born in Brooklyn, NY, US, in a family with an Equatorial Guinean Bubi mother and Sierra Leonean Krim father. She was the first child in the family born on American soil.

Fawundu graduated from the Stony Brook University with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies/Mass Communications, African American Studies. During her study she contributed to the bi-weekly student newspaper "Blackworld".[3][4] Later she studied at New York University, where received a Master of Arts in Media Ecology.[5] She completed her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2018.[6]

Fawundu is married to Howard Buford and has three sons with him:[7] Amal Buford, Che Ali Buford (alumna of the New York Philharmonic, composer)[8] and Ras Kofi Buford.

Work

Fawundu started her artistic path as a photographer, working in this field since 1993. As her work developed, the range of media she worked in expanded until it embraced new artistic techniques – printmaking, video, sound and assemblage. Fawundu incorporates elements of biography and geography, philosophy and mythology, as well as individual and collective experience, to reflect on different social issues, mostly concentrating on the history and reality of the African Diaspora.

A significant part of Fawundu's early career is her hip hop photography work. She started out working with The Source, Vibe[9] and Beat Down Magazines, work that extended into a 10-year journey documenting hip-hop culture and urban music of the African Continent.[10] In 1995, on assignment for Beat Down magazine, Fawundu photographed Prodigy and Havoc of Mobb Deep for their second album The Infamous.[11]

Beginning in 2008, Fawundu documented hip hop, Afro-pop, and urban youth culture in Accra (Ghana), Bamako (Mali), Dakar (Senegal), Addis Abbaba (Ethiopia), Johannesburg (South Africa), Nairobi (Kenya), Freetown (Sierra Leone), and Lagos (Nigeria).[12]

In 2015, Fawundu participated in the LagosPhoto Festival with the project "Deconstructing She," using herself as the subject to address stereotypes and prejudice over remnants of slavery.[13][14]

In 2016–17, along with eight other artists, Fawundu presented her work as part of the exhibition "Black Magic: AfroPasts/AfroFutures." Her installation "In the Face of History" is a wall of documents showing the oppression of various social groups, among them women and African Americans.[15] The installation was also shown as a part of the exhibition "In Plain Sight/Site" in 2019, and was highly acclaimed by many reviewers.[16][17]

In 2017, along with Laylah Amatullah Barrayan, she independently published a book and a journal titled "MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora," representing works of over a hundred female photographers of African descent from all over the world.

The critically acclaimed book[18][19] resulted in Fawundu going on a book tour which included events at the Tate Modern,[20] Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,[21] International Center of Photography,[22] Harvard University and other institutions. In 2019 the co-authors were invited to a talk at a photographic festival in Los Angeles, Photoville, organized by the nonprofit organization United Photo Industries.[23] The book can be found in many libraries around the world, including the Victoria & Albert Museum,[24] Columbia University,[25] the New York Public Library[26] and Harvard University.[27]

In 2019, Fawundu presented her show "The sacred star of Isis and other stories". She used mixed media photographic works to explore the relationship between traditional Mende beliefs from Sierra Leone and modern world values. The work was exhibited at two locations nationwide – at the African American Museum in Philadelphia[28] and Crush Curatorial gallery in Chelsea, New York City.[29] It is currently to be seen at the Museum of African Diaspora.[30]

Fawundu's latest solo exhibit – "No Wahala, It's All Good: A Spiritual Cypher within the Hip-Hop Diaspora" – combines her early hip hop works with recent documentation of hip hop and urban music on the African continent, representing the cultural connection between Africa and its diaspora.[31]

Fawundu's photography and art works are exhibited in numerous private and public collections including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Brooklyn Historical Society, New York;  Corridor Gallery, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland; the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo, Brazil; the Norton Museum of Art in Villa La Pietra, Italy;[32] the Brighton Photo Biennial, United Kingdom, and others.

Awards and recognition

Adama Delphine Fawundu has received numerous awards, including:

  • Photography Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2016)
  • Emerging Artist Award from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2018)[33]
  • BRIC Workspace artist-in-residence (2018)[34]
  • Center for Book Arts artist-in-residence (2019)
  • Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2021)[35]
  • Brooklyn Historical Society Community Initiative Grant

She was also on the list of the following rankings:

References

  1. ^ "Patiently Waiting: Delphine Fawundu-Buford". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  2. ^ Barrayan, Laylah Amatullah; Fawundu, Adama Delphine (2017). MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Eye & I Incorporated.
  3. ^ "Blackworld" (PDF). Stony Brook University. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  4. ^ "Blackworld" (PDF). Stony Brook University. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  5. ^ "Alumni US | New York University, Greater New York City Area". alumnius.net. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  6. ^ "Alumna Adama Delphine Fawundu '18 in Exhibition at Caribbean Culture Center African Diaspora Institute". Columbia – School of the Arts. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
  7. ^ Dingle, Joicelyn (July 2, 2016). "The Coolest Black Family in America, No. 39: The Fawundu Bufords". EBONY. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  8. ^ "Jennifer Koh: Broadway World, January 17, 2019". jenniferkoh.com. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  9. ^ Vibe. Vibe Media Group. September 1995. p. 158.
  10. ^ "Here and Now - June 16th, 2019 – Contact High". ABC7 New York. June 1, 2019. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  11. ^ "DELPHINE FAWUNDU ON PHOTOGRAPHING THE "INFAMOUS" MOBB DEEP". DELPHINE FAWUNDU ON PHOTOGRAPHING THE "INFAMOUS" MOBB DEEP. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  12. ^ "No Wahala, It's All Good: A Spiritual Cypher within the Hip-Hop Diaspora — Adama Delphine Fawundu (2019)". United Photo Industries. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  13. ^ "LagosPhoto | International art festival of photography in Nigeria". LagosPhoto. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  14. ^ "LagosPhoto: Africa's future comes into focus". america.aljazeera.com. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  15. ^ Jenkins, Mark (September 7, 2017). "In the galleries: 'Afrofuturism,' defined in the moment, by nine artists". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
  16. ^ "Review | In Plain Sight/Site". connecticut art review. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  17. ^ Haven, Arts Council of Greater New. "In Plain Sight, Artspace Lays History Bare". www.newhavenarts.org. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  18. ^ "The World as Seen by Black Female Photographers". Vogue. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  19. ^ Ruck, Joanna (May 2, 2018). "MFON: women photographers of the African diaspora – in pictures". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  20. ^ Tate. "MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora – Talk at Tate Modern". Tate. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  21. ^ Talks at the Schomburg: International... – Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, retrieved October 11, 2019
  22. ^ "MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora". International Center of Photography. November 6, 2017. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  23. ^ Sedacca, Matthew (April 2, 2019). "Photoville Is Coming to Los Angeles". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  24. ^ Eye & I, Laylah Amatullah; Barrayan (2017). MFON : women photographers of the African diaspora.
  25. ^ MFON : women photographers of the African diaspora. Brooklyn, NY: Eye & I Inc. 2017.
  26. ^ "New York Public Library Web Server 1 /All Locations". catalog.nypl.org. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  27. ^ "MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora". Harvard University Fine Arts Library. Retrieved October 12, 2019.
  28. ^ "Philaesthetic Exhibitions". African American Museum in Philadelphia. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  29. ^ Fuse, Arte (March 2, 2019). "Art Exhibits, Art Magazine, Contemporary Art, Art Blogs, Art Artists". Arte Fuse. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  30. ^ "The Sacred Star of Isis and Other Stories: Photography by Adama Delphine Fawundu". MoAD Museum of African Diaspora. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  31. ^ "No Wahala, It's All Good: A Spiritual Cypher within the Hip-Hop Diaspora — Adama Delphine Fawundu (2019)". United Photo Industries. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  32. ^ "Resignifications 2018 – Artist Bios". Villa La Pietra. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
  33. ^ "Announcing the 2018 Emerging Artist Grantees in New York – Rema Hort Mann Foundation". Retrieved October 10, 2019.
  34. ^ aclark (September 7, 2018). "Meet Our Fall 2018 BRICworkspace Artists-in-Residence!". BRIC. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
  35. ^ "Anonymous Was A Woman Award" (PDF). Anonymous Was A Woman. November 9, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  36. ^ "Delphine Adama Fawundu". OKAYAFRICA's 100 WOMEN. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
  37. ^ "Adama Delphine Fawundu". RPS Hundred Heroines. October 1, 2018. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
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