Artist’s Statement
A Litany For Survival is named after Audre Lourde’s 1978 poem. This performance uses oil on canvas as an embodied representation of the struggle, confusion and uncertainty of Syrian refugees- as mirrored in Lourdes poem. With arms and legs covered in black paint, Damoah crawls forward on a white canvas, only to be snapped back by an opposing force-resistance bands secured by a towering pillar of concrete.
Bio
British-Ghanaian artist Adelaide Damoah is a London based multidisciplinary artist, using investigative practices currently spanning painting, performance, collage, image transfer and photographic processes. Since her debut exhibition in 2006, Damoah has exhibited in myriad group shows including No Room for Fear with SMO Contemporary & Smithsonian and Under the Skin, Royal College of Physicians Museum, London.
With works in public and private collections nationally and internationally, she is a founding member of the Black British Female artist (BBFA) Collective and the Intersectional Feminist (INFEMS) Art Collective, and in 2019, became the first black artist to be appointed an academician of the Royal West of England Academy (RWA), Bristol.