ARTISTS WHO MAKE FUTURES
Conversation Series
ADAMA DELPHINE FAWUNDU X fayemi shakur
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Read audio transcript here.
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Fawundu describes her grandmother, a Garra textile maker in Sierra Leone, as a foundational collaborator whose patterns and techniques inform her understanding of identity as layered, repetitive, and deeply communal. Water emerges as a recurring motif, first in her video The Cleanse, where wetting her hair in slow motion becomes an act of ancestral return, and later through her family's self-identification as "wata people" from the Mano River. Their conversation highlights hair as a shapeshifter—defying gravity, holding memory, and serving as a crown. Fawundu connects these material and spiritual threads to the legacy of the Spirit House, where an open door policy, a shared doctor, and neighborhood children's programs modeled the kind of community care she continues through workshops with young people like the Newark Explorers.
Fawundu and shakur reflect on the artist's responsibility to archive in physical form, with Fawundu insisting that photographs must be printed and journals kept because "if it doesn't exist in the world, where is it?" She advises younger artists to be patient, to trust their visions, and to understand that ideas may take decades to materialize—as with her upcoming Praise House project, first envisioned in 1998. The conversation closes with mutual gratitude, Fawundu thanking shakur for being "so much a part of my journey here," and shakur celebrating the book as a testament to Fawundu's ability to transform Newark's creative lineage into something both deeply personal and collectively held.
This episode is also available on Bloomberg Connects.