Sarah Ama Duah: From Fashion to Sculpture and Performance

Sarah Ama Duah, born in Bremen in 1989 to a Ghanaian father, transitioned from fashion design to sculpture and performance, focusing on Afro-German memory culture. After studying fashion at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, she shifted to sculpture during a residency at Schloss Balmoral in Bad Ems, where she combined tourist clothing with Christian iconography. Her performance practice began in 2021 in Kumasi, Ghana, with artist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi. Duah's series "to build to bury to remember" critiques European monument culture and colonial history, using latex-covered performers and found objects. The work has been shown at Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale, Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden, and Humboldt Forum in Berlin. In 2025, she received the Wolfram Beck Prize for Sculpture. Her upcoming performance at Ursula Blickle Stiftung in Kraichtal on May 15, 2026, will feature Naomi Boima and Rositsa Mahdi, with a reading by Jenaba Samura.