Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Adelaide Damoah artist

Multidisciplinary artist Adelaide Damoah was born into a family of Ghanaian descent in England on 16 November 1976. She initially worked in the pharmaceutical industry and it was only during convalescence following an endometriosis diagnosis that her focus shifted to art. Damoah's art addresses themes of colonialism, identity, sexuality, and spirituality through various mediums, including painting, performance, collage, and photography. Her practice also involves using her body as a vehicle for imprinting.

Born: 1977 London, England


Biography

Multidisciplinary artist Adelaide Damoah was born into a family of Ghanaian descent in England on 16 November 1976. Her passion for art was sparked at school during her GCSE in Art, further ignited by a Frida Kahlo exhibition where she first realised the power and potential of self-portraiture. As she later recalled, ‘It became cathartic, a way of dealing with my teen angst’ (Creative Land Trust). However, she initially chose science over art, earning a degree in Applied Biology from Kingston University (1999) and later working in the pharmaceutical industry. Following an endometriosis diagnosis after years of pain, her focus shifted back to art during convalescence. Navigating challenges as a Black female in London's art scene, she fundraised for two years, eventually showcasing her canvases in a central London exhibition. Her 2006 debut exhibition, Black Brits, displayed oil paintings of renowned British figures with changed skin tones, prompting audiences to reexamine the iconography. Damoah's art addresses themes of colonialism, identity, sexuality, and spirituality through various mediums including painting, performance, collage, and photography.

Drawing inspiration from Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta, who emphasised the presence or absence of her body, and American artist David Hammons, famous for his body prints, Damoah often employs her body as a 'living paintbrush', imprinting it on various surfaces. Her performance, This is Me, the Inconsistency of the Self, performed during Frieze week in 2017, featured her body prints on canvas, echoing Yves Klein’s 1960 Anthropometries series. While admiring Klein's series, Damoah critiqued the evident power disparity between Klein, a formally dressed white man, and the undressed female performers who followed his directions before a clothed audience. In response, she initiated her own feminist performances and paintings, assuming both artist and subject roles. Spurring debate about female portrayal, feminism, and art history, Damoah aims to discuss the Black female body both historically and from her personal viewpoint, confronting prevailing stereotypes that portray it as an overtly sexual entity ‘available for white consumption’ (Aesthetica). Integrating her body prints with images, text, and gold, Damoah intertwines her family roots with the colonial relationship between Britain and Ghana. She frequently employs a limited colour palette. Red in her works symbolises flesh, blood, and the brutal histories of colonialism, as well as her lineage. Gold is incorporated to allude to her mother's wealthy ancestors from the 1800s and early 1900s, who accumulated their fortune from gold. Additionally, she includes blue as an homage to Klein’s 1960 performance, situating her art within an art historical framework.

Damoah's Genesis series (2018) marked the onset of her journey into her ancestry and colonial history. This artistic quest was ignited by the discovery of a photograph of her great-grandmother, Ama, from 1920, holding Damoah’s grandmother as a baby. The picture was taken in the region known at the time as the British Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). Limited to knowing only about Ama’s untimely death, Damoah became captivated by the photograph. She incorporated this image in numerous artworks, notably in The Rebirth of Ama (2018), which featured multiple versions of her great-grandmother repeated over the entire surface; in certain sections, the image was prominent, while in others, it faded, being simultaneously a familiar and mysterious figure to Damoah. This piece was the highlight of her solo show, Reembodying the Real, at Boogie Wall Gallery in London in 2020. Reflecting on the work, Damoah described it as an ‘homage to someone I could never know, but who looked statuesque, beautiful and proud’ (Payne 2020).

Damoah began her ongoing project Confronting Colonialism in 2018, after acquiring 204 out of print books titled Colonial Project, which originally served as instruction manuals about the British Empire. The first part of this project was a performance titled Into the Mind Of The Coloniser, showcased with Open Space Contemporary at Mary Ward House, Bloomsbury, in 2019. Through the series, Damoah explores stories related to her lineage and the tales shared by her family. She aspires to spiritually link to her ancestors by channeling their essence in her work and through meditative practices. Damoah observed, ‘I am interested in investigating my ancestral heritage […], creating my own mythology through repeated use of images of my ancestors, ritual and metaphor’ (Open Space Contemporary). Crucial in Damoah’s art is the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa, which suggests that reclaiming the past is not only acceptable but necessary in order to understand one's history, to avoid replicating past mistakes in the present.

Together with British-Ghanaian artist Enam Gbewonyo, Damoah co-founded the Black British Female Artists Collective (BBFA). She also helped establish the Intersectional Feminist Art Collective (INFEMS) and is a part of AWITA (Association of Women in The Arts). In 2019, Damoah achieved the distinction of being the inaugural Black artist to be named an academician at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA). In the UK public domain, Damoah’s art is represented in the Government Art Collection.

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Association of Women in The Arts (AWITA) (member)
  • Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries (Board member)
  • Black British Female artist (BBFA) Collective (founding member)
  • Intersectional Feminist (INFEMS) Art Collective (co-founder)
  • Kingston University (student)
  • Royal West of England Academy (academician)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Arachne: Rebirthing Dislocated Cultures, performance, Gagosian, London (2023)
  • Rites of Passage, group exhibition, Gagosian, London (2023)
  • A History Untold, group exhibition, Signature Gallery, London (2021)
  • 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Somerset House, London (2020)
  • Adelaide Damoah RWA: Reembodying the Real, Boogie Wall Gallery, London (2020)
  • No Room for Fear, group exhibition, Hogan Lovells, London (2019)
  • Genesis, MTArt Agency, London (2018)
  • Genesis, 1 Bedford Avenue, London (2018)
  • We Face Forward!, group exhibition, Bonhams London (2018)
  • A Seat at the Table, group exhibition, 198 Gallery, London (2017)
  • Vision to Reality, BBFA group exhibition, TEDx Euston, London (2015)
  • This is Us, Camden Image Gallery, London (2015)
  • Solo show, National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV), London (2009)
  • Rich Mix, group exhibition, Brick Lane, London (2009)
  • Supermodels, Nolia's Gallery, London (2008)
  • Black Lipstick, Bernie Grant Art Centre, London (2008)
  Adelaide Damoah
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Adelaide Damoah]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Adelaide Damoah] in the Ben Uri Library