Adebunmi Gbadebo

Robert T. Kimpson was two years old when he was buried in the cemetery for enslaved people at the True Blue plantation in Fort Mott, South Carolina. Located near the child’s gravesite are those of artist Adebunmi Gbadebo’s Nigerian ancestors, including her great-great-great-great-grandfather William Ravenell. The artist’s vessels speak to memory work, a practice of healing and caring for ancestors.

Gbadebo mixes the cemetery soil into the clay of her vessels, recognizing it as “a repository of my ancestors’ bodies, their flesh, their blood, the violence they endured . . . all of that went back to the earth.” Gbadebo repairs the vessel’s intended cracks with True Blue soil, incorporating hair from the diasporic community—here, that of Black artist Cheryl R. Riley.

–Elizabeth A. Williams, David and Peggy Rockefeller Curator of Decorative Arts and Design