Akosua Adoma Owusu

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Akosua Adoma Owusu (born January 1, 1984) is a Ghanaian-American avant-garde filmmaker and producer whose films have screened worldwide in prestigious film festivals, museums, galleries, universities and microcinemas since 2005. “Much of Owusu’s works address a collision of identities, where the African immigrant located in the United States has a triple consciousness.[1]” Owusu interprets Du Bois’ notion of double consciousness and creates a third identity or consciousness, representing the diverse consciousness of women and African immigrants interacting in African, white American, and black American culture. “These works embody the artist’s response to popular culture and tensions evolving from African culture and the African diaspora; weaving together fiction, myth and lived experiences with traditional storytelling.[2]” Owusu has stated that “instead of ‘Africanizing’ Western stories, I’m interested in reclaiming African history rendering them into what is happening in the present day.”

Early Life and Education

Born to Ghanaian parents, Akosua Adoma Owusu grew up in a working-class immigrant community in Alexandria Virginia. She is the youngest of three siblings to Grace and Albert Owusu, III. Grace was an elementary school custodian and Albert was a taxi driver. She was the first baby born in Northern Virginia on January 1, 1984. “She can probably also claim special status as one of the smallest babies to emerge on New Year’s Day. The premature infant arrived at 2:19 a.m. on Sunday at Alexandria Hospital… ‘She came two months early,’ said [Grace Owusu] the 29-year old woman, who [worked] in the laundry of the Crystal City Marriott Hotel. The child weighed a mere 3 pounds 9 ½ ounces at birth and measured 15 inches from head to toe.[3]”

Owusu holds MFA degrees in Film & Video and Fine Art from California Institute of the Arts and received her BA in Media Studies and Studio Art with distinction from the University of Virginia, where she studied under the mentorship of prolific avant-garde filmmaker, Kevin Jerome Everson.

Career

Named by Indiewire as one of the 6 Avant-Garde Female Filmmakers Who Redefined Cinema,[4] and one of The Huffington Post‘s Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know,[5] Akosua Adoma Owusu is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. Founded in 2007, her company, Obibini Pictures, LLC has produced award-winning films including Reluctantly Queer and Kwaku Ananse, which received the 2013 African Movie Academy Award for Best Short Film. Reluctantly Queer was nominated for the Golden Bear and Teddy Award at the Berlinale, Berlin International Film Festival in 2016.

Moving between the worlds of experimental film, African cinema, and fine art, Owusu established her presence in the fine art world with her showing in 30 Seconds Off an Inch at the Studio Museum in Harlem. At 25, Owusu was the youngest artist to be included in this exhibition of 60 distinct artworks by 42 established artists at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Meanwhile, the Museum of Modern Art screened Me Broni Ba, which “contemplates the obsession with white standards of beauty,” in its Documentary Fortnight program.

In 2010, Owusu was a featured artist at the 56th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. Artforum listed Me Broni Ba as one of 2010’s top ten films[6] In 2011, Owusu exhibited work alongside her University of Virginia mentor Kevin Jerome Everson in Cusp: Works on Film & Video by Kevin Jerome Everson & Akosua Adoma Owusu at the Luggage Store Gallery. Called the “intimate and the ideal realization of the vision of a valuable genius,[7]” this show included Revealing Roots, a silent reenactment of one of the most dramatic scenes from the television version of Alex Haley’s Roots combining found footage and scenes that star Owusu along with other African actors.

Owusu has also been featured in major exhibitions including Modern Mondays: An Evening with Akosua Adoma Owusu at the Museum of Modern Art; Existential Crisis at the Rochester Art Center; Shorts and Influences with Akosua Adoma Owusu at UnionDocs; America Is Hard to See at the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Art of Hair in Africa at the Fowler Museum; Two Films by Akosua Adoma Owusu at Art+Practice in association with the Hammer Museum; Prospect.3: Notes for Now New Orleans Biennial; Do/Tell at the Institute of Contemporary Art; Fore, VideoStudio; and Bearden Project at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fowler Museum, Yale University Film Study Center, and Indiana University Bloomington, home of the Black Film Center/Archive.

Curating

In 2016, Akosua Adoma Owusu was invited by Play-Doc Festival to curate Avant-Gutter, a film program of filmmakers paying homage to the influential work of African-American writer-director Charles Burnett in Spain. Avant-Gutter, a term coined by prolific filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson, includes the works of Arthur Jafa, Billy Woodberry, Kahlil Joseph, and Kevin Jerome Everson establishing visual responses to contemporary Black culture.

In 2015, Los Angeles FilmForum invited Owusu to curate a program, Triple Consciousness of her own work with additional films by Len Lye and Ken Jacobs that inform or influence her artistic approaches.

Rex Cinema

In 2013, Akosua Adoma Owusu launched a crowdfunding campaign to ‘Damn the Man, Save the Rex’. The Rex Cinema is one of Ghana’s oldest cinema houses. Political insecurity in Ghana in the 60s, 70s and 80s led to a decline in the Arts which also effected cinema houses. All of them closed down in the wake of military coups and curfews. At the time, there were only few modern cinemas in Ghana’s capital Accra. Owusu sought to change that statistic by reviving the Rex to its former glory. Her crowdfunding campaign was a success.

“I visited the Rex after she and her team had begun work – the exterior had a bright yellow new coat, the chairs within the interior compound were a shiny blue. I listened to Adoma describe the kind of films and events that could take place at the new Rex and felt excited about the future of filmmaking and the arts in Ghana. Just as the new Rex was close to being re-launched, Adoma started facing all sorts of challenges and blocks from civil servants. Rather than feel demotivated she decided to return to the States and create a new body of work.”[8] Despite Owusu’s best efforts, the process was extended and the project was stalled.

Awards

Her forthcoming feature, Black Sunshine received support from Creative Capital, Tribeca All Access, IFP and the Berlinale World Cinema Fund. Her film, Kwaku Ananse won the 2013 African Movie Academy Award for Best Short Film. Kwaku Ananse participated in Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma - César Golden Nights Panorama program of Best Short Films of the year, a program that selects notable short films awarded in 2013. Her film, Split Ends, I Feel Wonderful received the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2013.

Owusu’s short work, Me Broni Ba exhibited in 100 international film festivals and museums around the world and won Best Short Film awards at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Athens International Film Festival in 2009.

Following the success of Me Broni Ba, Owusu's next short work, Drexciya, was inspired by a myth of the Detroit-based techno band. It was praised at the 2011 Tarifa African film festival for its 'radical nature’ and ‘poetic insight’ and went on to win Best Experimental Film at the Guanajuato International Film Festival in Mexico.

Filmography

2016, Reluctantly Queer, (8 mins) super 8 & video

2015, Bus Nut, (7 mins) super 8 & video

2013, Kwaku Ananse, (25 mins) film

2012, Split Ends, I Feel Wonderful, (4 mins) film transfer to video

2010-11, Drexciya, (12 mins) video

2009, Me Broni Ba, (my white baby) (22 mins) film & video

2008, Boyant: A Michael Jordan in a Speedo is Far Beyond the Horizon, (4 mins) super-8

2008, Revealing Roots, (9 mins) video

2007, Intermittent Delight, (5 mins) film & video 2006 Tea 4 Two (2 mins) film

2005, Ajube Kete, (6 mins) film

Further Reading and Viewing

References

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