Conversation with Adelaide Damoah
Founder of BBFA Collective and Artist
If you were to give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Believe in yourself and surround yourself with like minded positive people who believe in you too. Find a mentor and seek companionship with people who are 10 + years ahead of you in their careers so you can learn from them and stretch yourself. Be a mentor yourself. You get back more than you give in such relationships and you will be surprised by what someone younger or less experienced can teach you. You don't know what you don't know and you can't know that you don't know until you are around people who know!
What are you excited about right now?
On a wider scale, I am excited about the future for women in art. Every day I see new conversations, events and actions taking place which are geared towards making things better for women. And then I see real life results like more women in positions of power and more solo shows for women in major galleries and more female artists having big sales at auction and all of this gets me excited about the future for us all! I am excited about what is coming next with AWITA; I am excited about what is coming next for the BBFA Collective- of which I am a founding member; I am excited about what is coming up for my sister friends in the collective- Enam Gbewonyo, Carleen de Sozer and Ayesha Feisal; I am excited about what is coming up for my genius friend and mentor Rachel Ara who was recently cover girl for the FT and I am excited about my solo show coming up this October- which I am working on with my agent MTArt and with AWITA co founder Katrina Aleksa. Exciting times ahead all around!
Which female artist, living or dead, would you invite to a fantasy dinner party and why?
Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Because I am in love with her work but I am also curious about her career trajectory. I would love to interview her for my Art Discussion series and extract as much information from her as possible! I connect with her work and her African diaspora story and would be interested to know more about her life, how it intersects with her career, what challenges she has had to overcome to be where she is now and how she overcame those challenges.