#12 In the UK with Adelaide Damoah: Decolonizing Arts and Feminism
For the #12 episode of We Belong, we are back in the UK to meet Adelaide Damoah RWA FRSA, a British painter and performance artist of Ghanaian descent who uses her body as a “living paintbrush”, the starting point for much of her work. Through arts, she addresses feminism, colonialism, religion and spirituality. As a descendant of Ghanaian parents, Adelaide Damoah has always had a particular interest in colonial history and knew that eventually she would explore the relationship between Ghana and Britain in her work. In 2016, she traveled to Ghana looking for old photographs of her family from the colonial era: it was at this time that she found a very powerful image of her maternal great grandmother which was taken in 1920, when Ghana was the British Gold Coast. In conversation with Adelaide, we discussed her relationship with her body and how she uses arts to discuss feminism, colonialism, racism and identities. Key: Rachel Cargle’s Ted Talk: “Coming to Terms with Racism’s Inertia: Ancestral Accountability”