Adebunmi’s most recent ceramics are the result of over two years traveling back and forth to True Blue where her ancestors once toiled and where some of them are buried. Carefully collecting handfuls of the red earth, Gbadebo has been returning with it to The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, where she is a resident artist. The series of vessels she has created from this raw material, some stuffed to the brim with rice also cultivated on this land, is a restoration of the land into a form that commemorates the history of her family line.

As she reflects, “I’m confronting my relationship with indigo, cotton, and rice in the context of their origins as commodities born of violence and enslavement. I’m interested in the whole system that produced these materials and how the memories of those with whom I share lineage has been treated.”