Professor Adama Delphine Fawundu '18 Exhibits on the Page in Two New Art Books
Assistant Professor of Visual Arts Adama Delphine Fawundu '18 is following up her recent exhibitions constellating the interconnectedness of geographies and our shared humanity with the release of two new art books, Praise House and In Search of the Spirit House.
In Search of the Spirit House chronicles Fawundu’s time in Newark at the Project for Empty Space, an organization that supports socially committed artists through residencies, subsidized studios, exhibitions, and professional development. Inspired by Newark-based artists, the book is a reflection on artistic community and a celebration of a city that has been a sanctuary for Black theatre, music, poetry, political discourse, and art. In particular, it draws on Amiri and Amina Baraka's Spirit House, a revolutionary community arts, educational, and spiritual center founded by the two poets in the late 1960s. Woven through images of Fawundu's exhibitions and and documentation of public art commissions, group exhibitions, talks, workshops, and performances, are interviews with artists, tracing a collective memory grounded in place.
Published by Archive Books in Berlin, Praise House is a memoir housed in an art book. Sharing a title with Fawundu's recent exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture in Charlotte, North Carolina, the book is exactly that: a celebratory vessel. Through photography, a matrilineal history expands into diaspora. Mothers, grandmothers, daughters, caregivers, and storytellers are connected by the materials that house them; Fawundu uses fabric swatches and family mementos alongside found objects and natural materials to evoke a history marked by slavery and colonization, as well as by love, family, and joy.
Available now for purchase, Praise House and In Search of the Spirit House are like self-contained exhibitions—though much more transportable.
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a Brooklyn-born and based visual artist of Mende, Bubi, and Krim ancestry. She has exhibited works engaging with themes of ancestral technology and radical imagination internationally, including at the Congo Biennial (2025) and the inaugural Malta Biennial (2024). The co-author of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, Fawundu is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, Norton Museum of Art, and more.