Adebunmi Gbadebo

Adebunmi's work in ceramics was recently exhibited in Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield,South Carolina at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, a show which predominantly exhibited the work of enslaved peoples--a first in the Met's history--and which has traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, University of Michigan Museum of Art, and is now at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta until May 12, 2024. Gbadebo has presented in exhibitions across the US and internationally in Africa, Europe, Asia, and is included in the 24^th Biennale of Sydney (Australia).

She is currently a 2023 Maxwell and Hanrahan Fellow, a 2022 Pew Fellow, and Artist in Residence at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. She has been written about in notable publications, including the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Hypebeast, Brooklyn Rail, Forbes, The Artnewspaper, and the American Craft Council magazine. Gbadebo has given talks at various educational and cultural institutions, some including the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Barnard College, the Newark Museum of Art and was the 2023 Keynote speaker for the American Ceramic Circle annual conference.

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.

She served as the Community Engagement Apprentice to Architect Nina Cooke John for the building of the Harriet Tubman Monument built in Newark, NJ, to replace a statue of Christopher Columbus. Gbadebo is currently working with students and faculty at Clemson University to create a sculpture that honors the 667 enslaved and Black laborers who transformed Fort Hill Plantation into Clemson University and whose unmarked burials were recently identified on the campus grounds.