Yesterday, BRIC, a Brooklyn-based leading arts and media institution, announced they will be commissioning a large-scale installation Joyful Blues by Contemporary Visual Artist, Adama Delphine Fawundu, for their 43rd Annual BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, on display throughout the Festival series from July 31st through September 18th.
Fawundu’s photography and textiles are centered on memories and narratives connecting Africa and its diaspora. Textiles and repeated patterning allow for her mixed media photography to become an interplay of fact and fiction, history and memory.
Fawundu has over fifteen years of experience working as a photographer in Brooklyn, New York. She began to gain her reputation while photographing Hip-Hop artists in the 1980s and has since grown her practice to include printmaking, video, sound and assemblage as an artistic language.
Her work has been included in recent seminal exhibitions and photography books including Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop, Fashioning Black Masculinity: The Origins of the Dandy Lion Project, and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present. She has also presented her work at The Tate Modern, The Brooklyn Museum, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Harvard University amongst many other institutions. These themes will be centerstage at the Prospect Park bandshell with Fawundu’s Joyful Blues on July 30th as part of the 2021 BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival.
“BRIC is honored to feature the work of Adama Delphine Fawundu, whose art speaks to the heart of Black experience for so many communities who call Brooklyn home,” said Kristina Newman-Scott, President of BRIC. “We look forward to sharing her work and centering memories and crucial narratives about the African Diaspora throughout the Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival season.”
Additionally, BRIC will host a screening of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film adaptation of “In the Heights” on Thursday, August 26th at 8:00pm. The film fuses Lin-Manuel Miranda’s kinetic music and lyrics with director of “Crazy Rich Asians,” Jon M. Chu’s lively and authentic eye for storytelling to capture a world very much of its place, but universal in its experience. The film stars Anthony Ramos (“A Star is Born,” Broadway’s “Hamilton”), Corey Hawkins (“Straight Outta Compton,” “BlacKKKlansman”), singer/songwriter Leslie Grace, Melissa Barrera (TV’s “Vida”), Olga Merediz (Broadway’s “In the Heights”), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Broadway’s “Rent”), Gregory Diaz IV (Broadway’s “Matilda the Musical”), Stephanie Beatriz (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), Dascha Polanco (“Orange is the New Black”) and Jimmy Smits (“Star Wars”). “In the Heights” was filmed in Manhattan, New York, primarily on location in the dynamic community of Washington Heights.
Previously announced artists for this groundbreaking 2021 BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival season include:
**Benefit Concerts
• Ari Lennox / KAMAUU and Adeline / Nesta – Saturday, July 31st
• Wattstax [Movie Night] / Theo Croker – Thursday, August 5th
• Buffy Sainte-Marie / Naia Kete – Friday, August 6th
• Ladama / Tiga Jean-Baptiste / DJ Ali Coleman – Saturday, August 7th *Family friendly performance- Doors Open 2:30pm/Show 4:00pm
• The Roots – Thursday, August 12th **
• Skip Marley/ Ivy Sole – Friday, August 13th
• Vijay Iyer / Joel Ross / Melanie Charles / Mahogany L. Browne – Saturday, August 14th
• Junglepussy / Tygapaw – Friday, August 20th
• Lido Pimienta / Rita Indiana / YENDRY – Saturday, August 21st
• Yaeji / KeiyaA / Nappy Nina – Friday, August 27th
• San Fermin / Attacca Quartet / Son Little – Saturday, August 28th
• Elsie Fest – Sunday, August 29th **
• Glass Animals – Tuesday, August 31st **
• Club Quarantine Live: D-Nice with Special Guests – Thursday, September 2nd **
• Passion Fruit Dance Company / Soul Summit Dance Party / St James Joy – Friday, September 10th
• Wizkid – Saturday, September 11th **
• Mr. Eazi / Bembona / AJO – Friday, September 17th
• Trombone Shorty with Orleans Avenue / MICHELLE – Saturday, September 18th
Benefit concert tickets for The Roots, Club Quarantine Live: D-Nice with Special Guests, and Wizkid performances are on sale now at LiveNation.com. Tickets for Elsie Fest will be on sale soon, via LiveNation.com. Tickets for Glass Animals are on sale now, via AXS.com. While the Festival will remain free of charge, and RSVPs are encouraged, however, you will no longer need to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test for admission. RSVP’s do not guarantee entrance, and entry is first-come, first-served.
Major Leadership Support for BRIC’s performing arts programs are generously provided by Howard Gilman Foundation, Lambent Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Public support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support for BRIC’s performing arts program is provided by Con Edison, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Scherman Foundation, Shubert Organization, Inc., as well as support from friends, members and numerous individuals.
For more information on this year’s full artist lineup and to RSVP, go to BRICartsmedia.org.
