Photo credit: Tobias Truvillion
Ep.202 Adebunmi Gbadebo (b. 1992 in Livingston, NJ) is a multidisciplinary artist working with paper, ceramics, sound, and film, exploring Gbadebo explores the archival record of her family’s ancestry. Through her research, material selection, and technical process, the artist emphasizes the prejudice of the historical record, activating her practice to restore Black subjectivity.
She received a BFA from the School of Visual Art, New York. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Maxwell and Hanrahan Craft Fellowship and the Keynote speaker for the American Ceramic Circle annual conference. In 2022, she was a Pew Fellow at the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Gbadebo is currently an Artist in Residence at The Clay Studio and has exhibited across the US and internationally in Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Her work is now on view in major exhibitions such as the 24th Sydney Biennale: Ten Thousand Suns; Minneapolis Museum of Art: Collage/Assemblage Part II: 1990-Now; and Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2022, and has traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, University of Michigan Museum of Art, and is now at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
Gbadebo’s work is in the public collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis MN; Weisman Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ; and South Carolina State Museum, Columbia, SC. Her public commissions include an ongoing sculpture project in collaboration with students and faculty from Clemson University, SC, and the Harriet Tubman Monument (2021), Newark, NJ.
Photo Credit: Tobias Truvillion
Articles:
Past Present Projects Magazine: Past Present No. 4
The Pew Center For Arts and Heritage: Fellow to Fellow: Adebunmi Gbadebo and Odili Donald Odita on Meaning in Materiality
WHYY: Philly artist wins $100K craft prize for her work remembering Black ancestors
Penn Today: Ritual and Remembrance
The Boston Globe At the MFA, enslaved Black potters’ work brings lives into the light in ‘Hear Me Now’
The Post and Courier At the Met, in Harlem and beyond, acclaimed artist honors enslaved SC ancestors
Forbes, Haunting Generational Trauma In “Remains” By Adebunmi Gbadebo At Claire Oliver Gallery In Harlem
Brooklyn Rail, Abstraction in the Black Diaspora
New York Times, Critic’s Pick: The Magnificent Poem Jars of David Drake, Center Stage at the Met
New York Times, New Shows That Widen the Beaten Path
Baby Boy Kimson, Born 9-12-83, Died Still, Age 0
Year: 2023
Size (h w d): 23 x 15 x 12 in
Medium: clay dug from True Blue Plantation, South Carolina, Carolina Gold rice, gas fired
Photo Credit: Lance Brewer
Marie Elizabeth Venning
Year: 2023
Materials: Clay dug from True Blue Plantation, South Carolina, Black hair from Cheryl Person, ceramic locs, glaze, gas fired
photo credit: Lance Brewer
Jane/ Mother of J. H. Lee/ Died Feb 15, 1909/ Age 85 yrs/ Gone to Fairer Land/ of Pleasure & Love/ To Join the Bringt Band of Angels Above
Materials: True Blue cemetery soil, human hair from Cheryl Person & Tierra H., Woodfire
Date:2021
Photo Credit: Eileen Travell
Installation View
Art Basel Miami Beach, 2023
Courtesy of Nicola Vassell Gallery
Photo credit: Lance Brewer
Installation view
Independent Art Fair 2024
Courtesy of Nicola Vassell Gallery
Photo credit: Lance Brewer
