Adebunmi Gbadebo

Adebunmi Gbadebo (Ah-dae-bu-mee Bha-dae-bo) lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gbadebo earned a BFA at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and a certification in Creative Place Keeping at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She was a Maxwell and Hanrahan Fellow (2023), a Pew Fellow (2022) and is currently an Artist in Residence at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. Gbadebo was a Keynote speaker for the American Ceramic Circle annual conference (2023) and has given talks at various educational and cultural institutions including the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Newark Museum of Art. She served as the Community Engagement Apprentice to Architect Nina Cooke John for the Harriet Tubman Monument in Newark, New Jersey, to replace a statue of Christopher Columbus, and is currently working with students and faculty at Clemson University to create a sculpture that honors Black and enslaved laborers.

Grounded in historically and culturally significant materials such as indigo dye, human hair collected throughout the African diaspora and soil hand-dug from the True Blue plantation grounds in South Carolina, Gbadebo’s practice is an exploration of heritage. Her use of such materials centers her family history of enslavement in the American South, while her ceramics draw inspiration from traditional African pottery techniques, calling on her Nigerian ancestry. Fueled by research and a commitment to the archival record, Gbadebo’s multidisciplinary approach investigates the complex relationships between land, matter, and memory.

Solo exhibitions include Adebunmi Gbadebo: Remains, Claire Oliver Gallery, New York (2023) and Uprooted, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ (2020). Group exhibitions include Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition, The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK (2025); Ten Thousand Suns, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Artspace, AU (2024); Blues People, curated by Alliyah Allen, Express Newark, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ (2024); Songs for Ritual and Remembrance, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, PA (2023) and Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2022). Gbadebo’s work is held in the collections of 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 Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Newark Museum of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design.