Adelaide Damoah - Bio & Works

Works

Adelaide Damoah: It's 3am and one of the most intense, spiritual, divinely feminine, creative, sexual experiences just happened in my brain while I slept off the pain (Part 1)

It's 3am and one of the most intense, spiritual, divinely feminine, creative, sexual experiences just happened in my brain while I slept off the pain (Part 1)

Painting

2021

Pigment on canvas

153 x 102 cm

60 1/4 x 40 1/8 in

It's 3am and one of the most intense, spiritual, divinely feminine, creative, sexual experiences just happened in my brain while I slept off the pain (Part 2)

Painting

2021

Pigment on canvas

153 x 102 cm

60 1/4 x 40 1/8 in

Moon cycle, period, full moon. This week, I have simultaneously experienced intense pleasure and excruciating pain

Painting

2021

Pigment and spray paint on wooden board

121 x 192 cm

47 6/10 x 75 6/10 in

The pain took me to another place with the pleasure and it was a magical beautiful creative womb space

Painting

2021

Pigment on canvas

120 x 183 cm

47 1/4 x 72 in

Where my whole body came more alive than it ever has been but only in my mind

Painting

2021

Pigment and spray paint on canvas

76 x 76 cm

29 9/10 x 29 9/10 in

Moonlit Power

Painting

2021

Pigment and ink on canvas

190 x 200 cm

74 8/10 x 78 3/4 in

Softly, gently, slowly

Painting

2021

Pigment and ink on hand made khadi paper

83 x 198 cm

32 7/10 x 78 in

So that every part of you caresses every part of me

Painting

2021

Pigment and ink on hand made khadi paper

81 x 195 cm

31 9/10 x 76 3/4 in

There is a kind of violence in my desire for you

Painting

2021

Pigment and ink on hand made khadi paper

111 x 162 cm

43 7/10 x 63 3/4 in

Olga

Painting

2018

Pigment and ink on hand made cotton rag paper

135 x 94 cm

53 1/8 x 37 in

Marie-Therese

Painting

2018

Pigment and ink on hand made cotton rag paper

135 x 94 cm

53 1/8 x 37 in

Bio

British-Ghanaian artist Adelaide Damoah works at the intersection of painting and performance within the context of colonialism, identity, sexuality and spirituality. After studying applied biology at Kingston University London, her subsequent career in the pharmaceutical industry was cut short following a diagnosis of the chronic illness endometriosis. While convalescing, she dedicated herself to art.

Damoah's current practice involves using her body as a "living paintbrush" to paint or print onto various surfaces. Initially inspired by a desire to subvert Yves Klein's "Anthropometries," in which he directed a group of women to cover their nude bodies in his signature Blue paint and then imprint themselves on white paper, Damoah prints her body onto white surfaces, thereby remixing Klein's original performance through her own identity and encouraging discussion about female representation, feminism, sexual stereotypes and art history. Combining her body prints with found images, text and gold, she also explores her personal family history and Britain's colonial past with Ghana in her work.

Damoah describes her practice as "generating a spontaneous communi(cati)on between myself and an audience using a performance in which I function as a channel by which a recorded history of what was previously known but became unknown in the past becomes uncannily known again in the present, only to become unknown again at the end of the performance. Each of my performances is a mythopoetic product of organic processes which depend not only on the different modes of my body's sensory perception of unambiguous (i.e. explicit and literal) and ambiguous (i.e. implicit and metaphorical) processes and events taking place in my multisensory perceptions of the sensible world; but also on the individual (mental and bodily sensory) and collective (cultural) memory-images I derive from both these different modes of perception and my diasporic experiences. "

Damoah cites Judy Chicago, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hammons, Yves Klein, Sokari Douglas Camp, Rachel Ara and Ana Mendieta among her main influences. She is a founding member of the Black British Female Artists (BBFA) Collective and the Intersectional Feminist Art (InFems) Collective. Damoah currently lives in London, UK.

Solo Exhibitions

2021

"Radical Joy", Sakhile&Me, Frankfurt, Germany

2020

"Reembodying the Real", Boogie Wall Gallery, London, UK
"Reembodying the Real", Royal West of England Academy, London, UK

2018

"Genesis", MTArt Agency, London, UK

2015

"This is Us", Camden Image Gallery, London, UK

2011

Hotel Locanda, Venice, Italy

2009

National Centre for Domestic Violence, London, UK

2008

"Supermodels", Nolia's Gallery, London, UK
"Black Lipstick", Bernie Grant Art Center, London, UK

2006

"Black Brits", Charlie Allen Bespoke, London, UK

Group Exhibitions

2021

"RWA Collection: Our Heritage, Our Future", Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK
"No Reserve" (INFEMS), Leicester Contemporary, Leicester, UK
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (Sakhile&Me), London, UK
"Biting Back & Enjoying the Taste" (INFEMS), PADA, Lisbon, Portugal
"A History Untold", Signature African Art, London, UK
"Reclaiming The Body", Virtual Online Museum of Art

2020

"Small is Beautiful", Flowers Gallery, London, UK
"Winter Exhibition", Boogie Wall Gallery, London, UK
"168 Annual Open", Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK
"Group Show", 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (Boogie Wall Gallery & Sakhile&Me), London, UK
"Figures", Sakhile&Me, Frankfurt, Germany
"Her Eyes, They Never Lie", Black Shade Projects, Marrakesh, Morocco
"Drivers of the Future", MTArt Agency, London, UK

2019

"Still Rising", Rafiki Arts, Oslo, Norway
"Group Show", Art X Lagos (TAFETA Gallery), Lagos, Nigeria
"No Room for Fear" (BBFA Collective), Hogan Lovells, London, UK
"Under the Skin", Royal College of Physicians Museum, London, UK
"Visual Diet", M&C Saatchi, London, UK

2018

"BBFA Presents" (BBFA Collective), TAFETA Gallery, London, UK
"Muse, Model or Mistress?", Gallery Different, London, UK
"From Violence to a Place of Power", Novo Foundation, London, UK
"After Cesaire/Modern Tropiques", Platform Southwark, London, UK
"We Face Forward!", Bonhams, London, UK
"Marrakesh Off the Tracks", Little Africa, Marrakesh, Morocco
"The Gallery of Small Things", Bisi Silva Project, Dakar, Senegal

2017

"The Gallery of Small Things", Bisi Silva Project, Dakar, Senegal
"Article 10", Amnesty International, London, UK
"Sankofa", Latham and Watkins LLP, London, UK
UNFOLD Festival, London, UK
"Dispersed" (BBFA Collective), Nubuke Foundation, London, UK
"A Seat at the Table", 198 Gallery, London, UK

2016

"Untitled", Latham and Watkins LLP, London, UK

2015

"Vision to Reality" (BBFA Collective), TEDx Euston, London, UK
"AACDD Festival" (BBFA Collective), Bargehouse Gallery, London, UK

2009

"British Art in the 21st Century", Opera Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
"Screen Nation Awards", British Academy of Film and Television Arts, London, UK

2007

I2U Gallery, London, UK

2006

Francophone Space African Arts Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

2005

Buffalo Film Festival, Clapham, UK