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, NY.
Adebunmi’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, NY and is currently at MFA Boston. She is currently a 2022 Pew Fellow, 2023 Maxwell and Hanrahan Craft Fellow, and Artist in Residence at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. Gbadebo has been written about in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Hypebeast, Brooklyn Rail, Forbes, and the American Craft Council magazine. She has given talks at the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, and the Newark Museum of Art and 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, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the South Carolina State Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Newark Museum of Art, amongst others. Gbadebo has presented in exhibitions across the US and internationally at the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh and in Europe.Â