To celebrate Black History Month UK we sent an artist call out to Black LGBTQ+ artists in Birmingham and surrounding areas. Working with Birmingham Pride & SHOUT Festival, the brief was to create a poster celebrating Black History Month 2023, Birmingham and being LGBTQ+.
Artist: Diana Amma Gyankoma Abankwah
Diana was born and raised in Botswana and originally from Uganda and Ghana. She is a self-taught dance artist, painter, multidisciplinary artist, musician and writer based in Stoke-on-Trent.
“My main medium is acrylic paint, in which I am a self-taught painter in psychedelic and visionary art. I also work with mixed media collages in materials as well as digital.
My artistic practice involves creating identity-centric self-portraits and artwork inspired by nature, Black feminine divinity, spiritual awakening, and psychedelia. My work reflects cultural intersectionality, the unseen Black African ‘inner’ experience; and healing through self-processing of inner trauma and spiritual awakening.
In my paintings and sketches, I am inspired by my own experiences of the fractured identity of the Black African female experience; repressed queerness, generational trauma, psychic wounds, cultural codependency, and spiritual awakening through the eyes of the Black African Third Culture individual.”
Follow Diana
Instagram: @inner_giantess.art
