The artist and BBFA collective founder discusses her influences and multidisciplinary practice

What was your first ever experience of art?
It was when I was little in Ghana while on holiday. I remember my mum taking me to this weaving village around the Volta region and watching people weave fabric. It was my first time seeing people making with their hands and dyeing fabric and it was really magical.

How does your Ghanaian heritage influence your work?
It’s inherent in everything I do; it’s who I am. I’m really blessed that my family immersed us in our culture because when I was younger I didn’t really appreciate it. I was lucky that we moved to Ghana, had an education there and got to meet so many inspiring women. Being surrounded by blackness and seeing art everywhere as part of daily life, from the women braiding hair to making beaded jewellery, was such a profound experience. For me now, my art has become a vehicle to learn about my heritage. My current body of work has enabled me to have conversations with my mother that I never had before, which has been really interesting.

Tell us a bit about BBFA Collective and how it began.
I started exhibiting in 2010 and didn’t know how to navigate the art world or show my work. I found it difficult paying for art fairs, selling work and getting any traction. I spoke to my other artist friends and discovered that they were also feeling the same way. It got to a point where I looked at the issue and the one common denominator was the fact that we’re black. So in 2015 I decided I wanted to do something about this and got a few artists across different disciplines together to show the quality and range of their work. I invited Adelaide Damoah, Carleen de Sozer and Ayesha Feisal and then I did a call for artists on social media. That was the beginning of it.

How do you see the black British art scene evolving?
I think what has been really exciting is that a lot of us are taking ownership. You have artist Zak Ové curating Get Up, Stand Up Now at Somerset House, and Professor Sonia Boyce’s Black Arts and Modernism research programme. Last year she opened a retrospective in Manchester focusing on underrepresented artists from the 1980s. You are seeing a lot more artists getting solo shows and Lubaina Himid won the Turner Prize in 2017, so there’s definitely change happening. Institutions are addressing the fact that there is a huge disparity in representation across the board for all artists of colour. Having said that, I don’t know if it’s a tokenistic thing, like it has been in the past, or whether it’s here to stay but what will determine that is us continuing to hold them accountable.

Tell us a bit about Nude Me / Under the Skin.
It investigates the relationship between black women and hosiery, charting the history of that relationship going back to some if its earliest renditions as stockings in the 18th century and its ties to slavery. The work also looks at the connection to the Windrush generation where black women supported the empire through the NHS and tights were part of their uniform. I’m also addressing how resilient black women are and the various ways we have been subjugated while still finding ways to pull through. This has a detrimental effect on our mental health and so much of Nude Me / Under the Skin is about trying to heal the hurt. Sustainability and dance, specifically ballet, is incorporated into my work as I make use of used tights worn by black women.

Which artists (living or deceased) inspire you?
Artists Claudette Johnson, Senga Nengudi and Sonia Boyce and the late curator Bisi Silva, founder of Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos.