“For me as an artist, using materials that connect me to my own ancestry is my act of stewardship.”
Adebunmi Gbadebo is a multimedia artist who uses culturally and historically imbued materials to investigate the complexities between land, matter, and memory on various sites of slavery, centering on deeply resonant materials like indigo dye, soil hand dug from plantations, and human Black hair collected throughout the diaspora. The resulting works tend to carry the stories of ancestors, families, and individuals either long overlooked or too closely surveilled. Born in New Jersey and based between Newark and Philadelphia, Gbadebo earned her BFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Gbadebo's work was included in the exhibition Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is currently a 2022 Pew Fellow and Artist in Residence at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. Gbadebo has been written about in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Hypebeast, The Brooklyn Rail, Forbes, and American Craft. She has given talks at the Museum of the African Diaspora, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Newark Museum of Art, and across many universities.
Gbadebo’s works are included in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Minneapolis Institute of Art, South Carolina State Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Newark Museum of Art. Gbadebo has presented in exhibitions across the US and internationally in Asia and Europe.