ADAMA DELPHINE FAWUNDU
Secrets , Traditions , Spoken and Unspoken Truths or Not
By Niama Safia Sandy
ADAMA DELPHINE FAWUNDU ’ s work is about finding ways to connect with her kin — a group not merely confined to those who share a direct common ancestor but an expansive definition inclusive of the many who descend from the dispersed , the stolen , those for whom the violence and opportunity wrought by the sea is at once a spectre and a fact of everyday life . She seeks to trouble the water , to reconnect African-descended peoples by raking / mining the canon , the archive , the contemporary for that which connects across time and space , to situate the transformative power of benediction , memory , and tradition in the Black Diaspora .
Fawundu ’ s series , Secrets , Traditions , Spoken and Unspoken Truths or Not , features the artist pictured in the embraces of her godmother ( Passageways # 1 ) and mother ( Passageways # 2 )— women who have nurtured her all her life . Each woman dons garments of cotton fabric made in Sierra Leone ; some by Fawundu ’ s paternal grandmother and aunt , others by the hands of women who themselves were likely taught in the embrace of a woman who wanted to ensure a woman could endure . The borders of the images are also adorned in fabrics sourced from all over the African continent — hand-sewn , dyed , stamped , designed in villages all over Nigeria , Ghana , textures placed in relief through a process of scanning digitizing . In Passageways # 1 , the artist listens intently as her godmother whispers into her ear , perhaps hoping for some morsel of wisdom not yet uncovered . The second image portrays Fawundu ’ s head resting in her mother ’ s lap , ear nestled in the folds of the fabric of her mother ’ s skirt , perhaps waiting for whispers of the past for guidance . In both images perhaps the viewer is being encouraged to seek the knowledge layered into the patterns of the fabrics ; the fact that the vetements themselves carry as much love and sweat equity , as they do secrets that only the cotton fibers may be able to tell the tale , and the intrepid journeys and lived experiences of the people who hold , fold , and are adorned by them . the cleanse , Fawundu ’ s first foray into video , is an invocation of abundance , ritual and rhythm , rites of passage , exaltation , and a tethering of Black feminine beauty to divinity and genius . Shot at 120 frames per second , with a running time of 10:28 , every movement is in high definition allowing for the reading of every gesture as doubly deliberate . For many Black women there is a cultural more against the proximity of water to one ’ s hair ; smiling gleefully , Fawundu wets her straightened hair with aplomb . Festooned with bolls of cotton , she bathes her hair in milk and honey , an age-old signifier of fertility and abundance . All of this under a hybridized chant-trap music peppered with the powerful prose of the 20th century ’ s most prolific Black writers . It seems she intends to celebrate the return of the hair — perhaps as a metaphor for the mind — to its natural state ; to a place wherein it can expand enough to make the connections between the Black Diaspora ’ s cultural , critical , and conditioned forms . opposite : Adama Delphine Fawundu Passageways # 1 , from the series Secrets , Traditions , Spoken and Unspoken Truths or Not , 2017 30 x 40 in .
24