Portfolio

This work was made for Adelaide Damoah’s solo show “Genesis” in 2018. The show was supported by MTArt Agency, Ashby Capital, University College London, Parker Harris PR and Bloomsbury Festival.

[The artist Adelaide Damoah’s] visual artmaking contests the outdated idols and ideologies of colour, race, creed and gender imposed both on her – and on the Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric history of her family – by colonialism and neo-colonialism. Damoah revalues – and thereby unbinds herself from – these outdated idols and ideologies by using the Promethean fire of her mythopoetic thinking to magically produce artistic images that function as ‘crucibles’ in which she (al)chemically interweaves materialised memory-traces of her family in the past and the present.

A stubborn woman causes trouble (Ɔbaa asobrakyeɛ so amaneɛ)

If unity is not a good thing, look at the black ants as they form a straight line (Baakoyɛ nyɛ fɛ a, hwɛ nkrane a ato santene)

Genesis XVI

Genesis XXVIII

If you are willing to buy, you do not ask for a reduction (Wobɛtɔ a, wonse adabraka)

If two people carry (wood), it does not weigh them down (Baanu so (dua) a, ɛnmia)

Genesis XXXI

Genesis IX

If someone does not know you, he may call you a beast (Obi nni wo a, ɔfre wo aboa bi)

One who has seen a thousand does not praise a hundred (Deɛ wahunu apem nkamfo ɔha)

Genesis III

Genesis VII

A woman’s glory is marriage? (Ɔbaa animuonyam ne awareɛ)

One person alone is a slave (Ɔbaakofoɔ yɛ akoa)

Genesis XXIV

Genesis XL

At someone else’s mother’s funeral you weep for your own mother (Obi ni ayie ase na obi su ne ni)

If a woman doesn’t love you it doesn’t help if you splash money on her (Ɔbaa mpɛ a, ɛnim se woate sika)

Genesis XI

Exodus XXI

THIS IS ME
Damoah covers her body in oil paint and uses herself as a tool to print on top of her hand written text, resulting in paintings which are not figurative in a classical sense. A deep desire to truly connect with her heritage drives the use of her parents language in the work. She cites her main influences for this evolution as being Judy Chicago, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ana Mendieta.