Ama BE is WPA’s 2023 Artist-Organizer-in-Residence. Ama BE is using this residency to continue her research on the agricultural practices of first generation Africans living in the DC area. Throughout the summer, Ama has hosted interviews with local African immigrants to collect their stories about food, farming, and medicine, and how they have adapted traditional sacred practices since immigrating to this region. She is then translating these stories into sculptural pieces that come to life in the gallery space and change throughout her time in residence.
Join us for a public Open House on Saturday, September 30 from 1–4 pm at Gallery 102 at 22nd St NW Washington, DC 20052. This event is free but please RSVP here.
About the Artist
Ama BE is a Ghanaian American, transdisciplinary artist exploring African relationships to land, labor, and migration. She works largely with botanical materials that carry antithetical ties to hegemonic trade, violent labor migrations, spirituality, and holistic remedy. Her work probes at the porous spaces between time, materiality, sentience, and memory to propose nuanced encounters and open suggestive space for performing and embodying Africanfuturity.
About this Residency Program
WPA Residency program is a yearly opportunity for DC-based artists to conduct independent research, widen their network, and organize programming. Since the fall of 2020, we have hosted six artists: Brittney Washington, Bilphena Yahwon, Mikhail Ilyin, Adele Kenworthy, Kamal Rahim Tanner Tourgee, and Ama BE.
Dates
May–September 2023
Location
Located at WPA's Project Space and Corcoran School for the Arts & Design in Gallery 102 at Smith Hall of Art
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