Professor Adama Delphine Fawundu '18 Exhibits in 'Never The Same River' at the Ford Foundation

Assistant Professor of Visual Arts Adama Delphine Fawundu '18 is featured in a new exhibition, Never The Same River, at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City.

Curated by Dexter Wimberly—who also curated Fawundu's recent exhibition Praise House—Never The Same River features artists exploring themes of bodily autonomy and human migration: Fawundu, KV Duong, Brendan Fernandes, Anoushka Mirchandani, Edison Peñafiel, and the duo Elliot & Erick Jiménez.

Drawing from the famous remark attributed to Heraclitus that "No man ever steps in the same river twice," the exhibition's title refers to the show's meditation on change and impermanence. The phrase could be switched around: no river ever touches the same man twice. Just as rivers flow and bodies evolve, so too do our identities, perceptions, and environments—particularly in the events of trauma, displacement, and resistance. Through photography, video, sculpture, and painting, the show considers how individuals assert agency over their own bodies in the face of cultural and systemic forces that seek to control or define them.

Fawundu, who also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Concentration Head of Photography, weaves a constellation of connections between herself and her global kin, mapping both physical and metaphysical movements across Africa and its diaspora. Her work in the exhibition includes Ngewo Whispers (archival pigment on Vibachrome, 2023), shot in Savannah, Georgia; Vibrations from the Deep (two-channel HD video, 2025), filmed across Nigeria, Congo, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Malta, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States (South Carolina, Utah, Georgia, and Maine); and her Praise House Series (Archival inkjet prints, custom wallpaper, 1998–2025). Fawundu's work spans literal distances, but just as significant as setting are the intentionally composed clothing and jewelry of her subjects, which hold diasporic histories themselves. In her self-portrait Ngewo Whispers, the cascading cowrie shells crafted by Lafalaise Dion from Côte d'Ivoire that veil her face refuse a fixed identity, asserting the individual's existence as part of a life force older and more powerful than borders.

For nearly 90 years, the Ford Foundation, an independent organization working to address inequality and build a future grounded in justice, has supported visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. Since March 2019, the Ford Foundation Gallery at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in New York City has spotlighted artwork that wrestles with difficult questions, calls out injustice, and points the way toward a fair and just future. Located near the United Nations, it draws visitors from around the world, addresses questions that cross borders, and speaks to the universal struggle for human dignity.

Never The Same River is on view at the Ford Foundation's free gallery at 320 E 43rd St August 12–December 5, 2026. Register in advance for admission here.