Sarah Ama Duah

In TO BUILD TO BURY TO REMEMBER, artist Sarah Ama Duah develops a performative installation situated between sculpture and the body. Together with four performers, she constructs living latex monuments at the Hamburger Kunsthalle that honor lives often rendered invisible within cultures of remembrance. From a Black feminist perspective, Duah examines monuments, remembrance culture, and the fetishized status of historical memorials. The hybrid figures propose alternative forms of commemoration and ask: To whom are monuments dedicated? And what remains when colonial monuments are removed? The performance is part of Duah's ongoing series of works of the same name, which emerged from her engagement with equestrian statues, such as that of Frederick the Great in Berlin. It has been presented, among other venues, at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale (Ghana), the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden, and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.