NGO {Palm Oil} | Open House with Ama BE

Since May, Ama has been in WPA's project space researching the agricultural practices of first generation Africans living in the DC area. Ama has been collecting stories from local African immigrants about food, farming, and medicine and translating these stories into sculptural pieces. Since August the residency project has been housed at Gallery 102 at the Corcoran School of the Art & Design to further expand access to resources.

For this Open House, Ama would like to extend a warm welcome in particular to all "children of African Aunties" to join her in paying homage to the Aunties and Uncles who tend this earth to sustain migrated families. Within an installation of visual elements from Ama’s ongoing research, you are invited to lift up the labor of African elders who help families ground into new terrain. We will collectively thread their stories into our own in a continuous beading activity, to the sounds of old school African party music.

This event is free but please RSVP here. Refreshments & light snacks will be provided. Gallery 102 is located at The Smith Hall of Art, 801 22nd St NW Washington, DC 20052. The gallery is located on the first floor.

We're so grateful to the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design for hosting the second iteration of this residency project! Special thanks to Maria del Carmen Montoya, Dean Kessman, and Babette Pendleton.

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

We host an annual summer residency for Artist-Organizers. The Artist-Organizer-in-Residence is a yearly opportunity for an artist-organizer to conduct independent research, widen their network, and organize programming. Since the fall of 2020, we have hosted five Artist-Organizers-in-Residence: Brittney Washington, Bilphena Yahwon, Mikhail Ilyin, Adele Kenworthy, Kamal Rahim Tanner Tourgee, and Ama BE. This opportunity is for artists based in the DC region. Applications will open in the Spring.