Andrea Ambam

How do you currently describe your practice? 

AA: I am a politically engaged performance artist who interrogates the art’s potential for movement-building, truth telling, and transformative justice. I write, perform and amplify stories that center Black personhood, especially in discussions of state-sanctioned violence most often through the manipulation of time, poetic text and ethnographic material. My practice resists notions of “moving on” and reclaims time stolen from Black lives via artistic creations where identity fills, overwhelms, and disrupts the center. I use art to process and reimagine justice, grief, joy, and liberation. 

Do you have a memory that stands out from your time in Arts Politics?

AA: I’ll never forget Sonia Sanchez sharing a poem at our graduation. It was exactly what I didn’t know I needed to move forward. 

What was most impactful to you during your time in the M.A. in Arts Politics?

AA: I’d love being surrounded by so many different artists of different practices, mediums, backgrounds, and identities. I learned something new every minute I was in their presence. We were all so different and yet always bonding over the collective struggle. I became a more specific and more considerate storyteller because of them.

What was most challenging during your time in the M.A. in Arts Politics?

AA: Graduating during a pandemic was SO hard. As soon as the reality of 2020 set in, you could really see the wear it was taking on everybody— students and faculty. I’ll never forget how we leaned on and supported each other.

What are you working on now? 

AA: I’m currently developing my debut one woman show, Rehearsing Justice, with Broadway Advocacy Coalition. Rehearsing Justice continues the work I started at APP— focusing on performance’s role in Black liberation using anti-lynching plays of the 18th century and the Black women who wrote them as inspiration. Both historical and afro-futuristic, Rehearsing Justice follows the journey of a time-traveling Ida B. Wells who suddenly finds herself in the 21st century called to investigate police brutality and our current struggle for liberation as an Anti-Lynching crusader. 

I’m also just doing a lot of writing! Plays, poems, essays! I’ve always wanted to “perform” but never knew how much writing would become essential to my practice.

Since graduating, how has the M.A. in Arts Politics  unfolded or shifted how you approach your work? 

AA: APP [Art & Public Policy] gave me a language to describe my work that I either 1)  didn’t have before and/or 2) didn’t have the courage to claim for myself before. I’m also creating more of the work I want to see. I came into APP thinking I was going to figure out how to get into performance spaces (I did!), but I also gained the power and agency to carve out my own spaces (and make plenty of room for others!). Most of all, APP taught me to really listen before responding.

Read Andrea's Alumni Profile