HESSE FLATOW is pleased to celebrate We be the luminous blues…, a new exhibition by artist, Columbia University School of the Arts alumna, and Assistant Professor Adama Delphine Fawundu ’18, on view in the Lenfest Center for the Arts lobby from September 8, 2026 through March 14, 2027.
The exhibition presents eleven monumental banners by Fawundu that honor ancestors and alumni of Columbia University whose lives and work transformed the world in remarkable ways. Among those represented are anthropologist Ruth Benedict; biochemist Marie Maynard Daly; educators Annie Elizabeth “Bessie” Delany and Sarah Louise “Sadie” Delany; cultural preservationist Ella Cara Deloria; writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston; minister and suffragist Mabel Ping-Hua Lee; organizer and social worker Antonia Pantoja; actor and singer Paul Robeson; and attorney and advocate Frederick Wells. The exhibition also acknowledges Jamaica, Cuffy, Prida, Caesar, Jenny, Betsy, Pompey, and Richard Jenkins, who were enslaved by Samuel Bard and his family, as well as James, who escaped in 1776.
Fawundu’s richly layered collages bring these figures into dialogue with sacred geometric symbols inspired by Yoruba, Bakongo, Mende, Navajo, and Lenni-Lenape traditions. Through her distinctive process, Kpoto Patchwok,
Fawundu mines and regenerates an expanding visual archive drawn from her body, textiles, hair, and various bodies of water, transforming these materials into complex compositions that connect histories, geographies, and ancestral memory.
We be the luminous blues… reflects Fawundu’s ongoing engagement with lineage, place, and collective memory, creating a visual language in which past and present converge. The exhibition offers a space to consider the lives of those who came before and the legacies they leave for generations to come.
We be the luminous blues… is on view daily from 10 AM to 6 PM, and whenever public events are taking place at the Lenfest Center. The exhibition is open to the public and closed on University Holidays.
