Adebunmi Gbadebo | Mary Weeks Bryant | 2025 | soil from True Blue Plantation (Fort Motte, South Carolina), Carolina Gold rice, pit-fired | 12 x 18 x 12 in
Highpoint Editions artist Adebunmi Gbadebo presents a new body of work in a solo exhibition titled Watch Out for the Ghosts at the Nicola Vassel Gallery in New York. “The title—a quote from Amiri Baraka’s poem The Why's and the Wise—echoes Gbadebo’s journey through loss, family history and reconnecting with the land they once inhabited. In bringing together works made in ceramic and paper along with a short film, this exhibition signals the evolution of the artist's conceptual practice and the deepening of her research into material and process.” - Nicola Vassel Gallery
Adebunmi Gbadebo | Witness | 2025 | soil from True Blue Plantation (Fort Motte, South Carolina) human hair, cherry tree branches, shoe polish and Tung oil | trunk dimensions: 53 ½ x 13 in | overall dimensions: height 79 ½ in
“Upon learning of her ancestors' enslavement on True Blue plantation in Fort Motte, South Carolina, Gbadebo made the site a focal point of her work. For the past three years, she has hand dug soil from the cemetery that she then transforms into clay for her ceramic vessels. The works' unique sizes and anthropomorphic shapes instinctively develop as she hand builds each of them using a Nigerian and Cameroonian coiling technique. Beyond the soil which they are made of, Gbadebo’s vessels carry—inside them or on their surfaces—invocations of True Blue’s landscape, sometimes being filled with pine needles, Carolina gold rice or woven segments of donated hair, all while acting as bodies occupying space.”
The exhibition is on view from September 4th to October 18th, 2025.
Learn more about the exhibition here!