At the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Adama Delphine Fawundu unveils an immersive installation shaped by the spiralling cosmologies of the Luba, Kongo, and Yoruba worlds. Known for her multidisciplinary practice that braids ancestral memory with contemporary consciousness, Fawundu approaches the Bienal as a site of invocation, resonance, and return. Her work draws on Lukasa memory boards and the Kongo Dikenga to explore cyclical time, embodied knowledge, and the vibrational threads that link Africa and the Afro-Brazilian spiritual sphere. Through textiles, sound, herbs, water sachets, archival fragments, and collaborative performance, she constructs an intimate cosmology that pulses with continuity across oceans and generations.
In this conversation with Suzette Bell-Roberts, Fawundu reflects on collaboration as a spiritual technology, the intelligence of materials, and the ancestral grammars embedded in sound and gesture. What emerges is a powerful meditation on connection — and the forces that shape who we have been, and who we may yet become.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: Your installation for the Bienal emerges from the Lukasa and the Dikenga systems, rooted in embodied memory and cyclical time. How did these cosmologies shape the structure of the work?
Adama Delphine Fawundu: I am driven by the idea that all bodies are living archives… how can we activate our embodied intelligence to create varied possibilities for a well-balanced, holistic existence in this divine space we call earth? When researching for my work at the biennial, I used Luba and Kongo ideologies as a lens to examine indigenous retention in the Brazilian Afrosphere. I am particularly interested in the multiple intelligences and holistic nature of indigenous thought systems.
I examined the concepts of holistic existence (past, present, future) through the Luba people’s Lukasa memory devices and the Kongo Dikenga, activated by the Bukongo people, as a framework for better understanding the continuum in Afro-Brazilian spiritual, auditory, and physical expressions. This information influenced my thought process and internal philosophies, which, in turn, shaped my exploration of materials and my approach to creating works to share in the biennale. I spent a significant amount of time translating spiritual songs from the Umbanda belief system. Something at the core of Lukasa and Dikenga philosophies, as well as many other indigenous African cosmologies, is the power of collaboration. Collaboration was at the core of this new creation. I collaborate extensively with materials, the land and friends. My incredibly talented and brilliant musician friends Rodrigo Brandão and Mari Vieira, also known as Ladybug Mecca from the infamous group Digable Planets, were quite instrumental as I formed the audio component to the video piece. I became fixated on one of the Umbanda incantations that called for Congo and Quilombos. I only had the text, but Rodrigo was able to interpret the rhythms while Mari sang the words. Upon entering the space, one is immersed in a meditative environment. Even if you don’t know the language, the body interprets the sound into a feeling. I am interested in the power of the sonic, visual, and olfactory to awaken a memory, activate a sense, and prompt us to consider and reconsider our state of being in the world.
