I first met Delphine Fawundu-Buford a few years ago; damn I don’t even remember how we met, she’s just one of those sparkling magical people who seems to be in your life for the longest, kinda like family. We had been talking about publishing some of her 90s Hip Hop work: Lauryn Hill on the stoop, so innocent you might not even spot her in a crew of round the way girls hangin’ out; Smif N Wessun acting out, kinda crazy bringin me back to Bucktown; and then all these amazing shots taken of storefronts, of a place and a time that’s that old New Yawk that natives reminisce about when they remember how this city used to be… Let’s just say, Delphine’s got the photo album for a period in Hip Hop history that few people are checking for, but all of us need to be.
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Miss Fawundu-Buford just reached out to me, to let me know about her exhibition of new work at a group show curated by the amazing Deborah Willis called Girl Talk, which is up at Renaissance Fine Art in Harlem through Sunday April 11. The show closes on April 11 with an artist talk at 2pm. In advance of then, I’m going to let Delphine speak about her pieces, an interpretation of Nina Simone’s Four Women.
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© Delphine Fawundu-Buford
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Nina Simone’s Four Women, An Interpretation
Four Self-Portraits by Delphine Fawundu-Buford
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With this series I created a 2010 interpretation of Nina Simone’s Four Women.
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Nina Simone’s Four Women speaks to the legacy of slavery and it’s transformation into four archetypes of black women.
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Nina sings… My skin is black./My arms are long./My hair is wooly./My back is strong./Strong enough to take the pain./Inflicted again and again./What do they call me? My name is Aunt Sara.
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In my depiction, Aunt Sara is the “strong” black woman. This strength is reflected mainly in her character and level of endurance. Sometimes her strength is great as she is a vibrant, creative, hard-working woman who gets the job done. However at times, she finds this strength to endure the societal pain that has been “inflicted again and again.” The words on Aunt Sara’s back reflect these conflicting strengths.
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Nina sings…My skin is yellow./ My hair is long/ Between two worlds./ I do belong./ My father was rich and white./ He forced my mother late one night./What do they call me? My name is Safronia.
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In this series Safronia is often faced with the question: What are you? This is due to her light skin, light eyes and hair texture. In a race and image driven society we are often comfortable when we can quickly place a person within some racial or ethnic category. Safronia is an innocent spirit conceived into a world that refuses to holistically deal with the horrors of her ancestral past. Safronia’s ambiguous image, and conflicting ancestry leaves her wondering: Who am I?
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© Delphine Fawundu-Buford
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Nina sings… My skin is tan./My hair is fine/my hips invite you../My mouth like wine./Whose little girl am I?/Anyone who has money to buy/What do they call me? My name is Sweet Thing.
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In this series, Sweet Thing represents a hybrid between the racially and sexually exploited, Sara Baartman a.k.a “Venus Hottentot” of South Africa, and the scantly dressed hyper sexualized black woman or “Vixen” that has become iconic in urban culture. Here Sweet Thing is tired, “pimped out” and confused. Her mannequin with an attitude posture symbolize the little power that Sara Baartman must have had to not totally mentally give in to the harsh experience of being forced to tour Europe as onlookers leisurely examined her “abnormally” huge derrière. Sweet Thing like the “Vixen” is faceless. In our society, her image represents the manufacturing of beauty: breast and buttock implants, hair weaves, dieting products, and a host of other capitalistically driven cosmetic adjustments.
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© Delphine Fawundu-Buford
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Nina sings… My skin is brown./My manner is tough./I’ll kill the first mother I see./My life has to been rough./ I’m awfully bitter these days./Because my parents were slaves./What do they call me? My name is PEACHES!
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Although Ms. Simone’s Peaches may have been a revolutionary, someone ready to fight for what they believe in regardless of their past, I chose to depict Peaches as a young gang member. Peaches was born to parents who are both slaves to a system which perpetuates poverty, lack of self-education, consumerism, racism, and sexism. Deep down she knows that she comes from a significantly rich ancestry, but some how something went wrong. She rebels against a society that does not accept her, educational institutions that belittle her, corporations that control her, and a prison industrial complex that welcomes her. Misguided in her form of retaliation, she fights hardest against and even kills the ones closest to her. “My name is PEACHES!” She cries for help everyday. At what time do we listen?
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www.delphinefawundu.com
www.theRFAgallery.com