‘TRIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS’

In the presence of the artist

Instead of ‘Africanizing’ Western stories, I’m interested in reclaiming African history rendering them into what is happening in the present day. - Akosua Adoma Owusu

Akosua Adoma Owusu (1984) is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker, producer and cinematographer whose films address the collision of identities. Interpreting the notion of "double consciousness" coined by sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois to define the experience of black Americans negotiating a sense of selfhood in the face of discrimination and cultural dislocation, Owusu aims to create a third cinematic space or consciousness. In her works, feminism, queerness and African identities interact in African, white American, and black American cultural environments.

Owusu's films have screened internationally in festivals like Rotterdam, Locarno, Toronto, New Directors/New Films (New York) and the BFI London Film Festival. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Fowler Museum and the Indiana University Bloomington, home of the Black Film Center/Archive. She was featured artist of the 56th Robert Flaherty Seminar. In 2015, she was named by IndieWire as one of 6 preeminent Avant-Garde Female Filmmakers Who Redefined Cinema.

Akosua Adoma Owusu will be in conversation with Peggy Pierrot.