Join us for a celebration of the highly anticipated MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, an exclusive and commemorative biannual journal committed to establishing and representing a collective voice of women photographers of African descent, with photographer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn and artist Adama Delphine Fawundu. This iconic issue features an introduction by Dr. Deborah Willis and includes conversations and essays written by women scholars, journalists, and artists, featuring 100 women photographers across the Diaspora.
This program is co-sponsored by the Magnum Foundation and the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University Tisch School of the Arts; copies of MFON will be available for purchase and signing.
This is a free event, but please register in advance.
Bios
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a New York City–based multimedia visual artist whose work examines the theory of social constructivism within the development of identity. With this concept in mind, her art investigates the impact of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism on social constructs including race, gender, and class. Her art appropriates representations of Blackness and African ethnicities while disrupting stagnant ideas about these identities. It queries the fine line between intrinsic identities and the identities evolved from social, political, and nationalistic influences.
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is a documentary photographer based in New York City. Her work has been supported with grants and fellowships from the International Women's Media Foundation, Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African American Studies, and the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. She is a four-time recipient of the Community Arts Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her projects have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC, and OkayAfrica, among other publications. She has curated exhibitions at the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Port Authority of NY/NJ, and has given talks on her photography at Yale University, New York University, Howard University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She was recently an artist-in-residence at the Waaw Centre for Art and Design in Saint-Louis, Senegal. Barrayn is the founder and coeditor of Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.
