Uprooted: Adebunmi Gbadebo

Rejecting traditional art materials associated with Whiteness, the Newark-based artist, Adebunmi Gbadebo chose human Black hair as her primary medium. Varied locs of hair climb up a wall in her sculpture, Dada. Hair is also embedded in her prints, with images referencing her ancestry. Even though having been “uprooted,” these hair locs carry histories and memories within their DNA of people of the African diaspora.

This exhibition is part of NJCU Black History Month as well as Women’s History Month Celebrations and co-sponsored by Speicher-Rubin Women's Center for Equity and Diversity.

(Adebunmi Gbadebo, History Paper Portrait: Uprooted, 2018, hair made into paper, thread, silk screen, artificial braids. Courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery.)