Ama Josephine B. Johnstone

Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism

Biography: Ama Josephine B. Johnstone is a speculative writer, artist, curator, and pleasure activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of race, art, ecology, and feminism. A doctoral candidate in psychosocial studies at Birkbeck, University of London, she describes her research as taking “a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana and across the Black universe.” Johnstone is in residence at Bard during the spring 2021 semester to teach and develop local collaborations in the Hudson Valley. Johnstone is the recipient of the 2020 Local, International, and Planetary Fictions Fellowship with Frame Curatorial (Helsinki) in partnership with EVA International (Limerick). Her fiction has been published internationally by, among others, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Architectural Review, and Feminist Review. She is working on her first book, a speculative duology. Her installation works have been commissioned/exhibited by Casco Art Institute (Utrecht), Ankur Arts (Glasgow), and Other Futures Festival (Amsterdam). She is also a performance artist who trained in contemporary performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. At Bard: 2020–21.