When the Water Sings: Ancestral Memory and Intuitive Art Making

Free program in the Bernard Osher Foundation Auditorium  

Sea Whispers for Mami Wata at the shore of Guanahani, 2022, Adama Delphine Fawundu 

Featured in Passages in American Art, photographer and interdisciplinary artist Adama Delphine Fawundu's video installation Cosmic Echoes, 2023, centers around themes of indigenization and ancestral memory. Hear from the artist in conversation with Shalini Le Gall, PhD, Chief Curator, the Susan Donnell and Harry W. Konkel Curator of European Art, as they discuss the creative process of making Cosmic Echoes. 

Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and interdisciplinary artist born in Brooklyn, NY, the ancestral space of the Lenni-Lanape. She is a descendant of the Mende, Krim, and Bubi peoples.  Her distinct visual language centers around themes of indigenization and ancestral memory. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Her latest artist book, When the Water Sings, is one of a five-book collection in the Plume House Prayer Series II published by Rutgers University's Shine Portrait Studio. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University. 

Missed it live? Watch it here.

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Made possible by the Leonard and Merle Nelson Social Justice Fund at the Portland Museum of Art.   

The purpose of the Leonard and Merle Nelson Social Justice Fund is to honor those artists whose commitment to social justice is manifested in their work and lives. The fund supports exhibitions, lectures, scholarships, programs, or acquisitions that directly or indirectly address the relationship between works of art and social justice.