Ama Josephine Budge - Writer / Artist / Curator
Ama Josephine Budge is a British-Ghanaian Speculative Writer, Artist, Curator and Pleasure Activist who explores the kinships between Blackness, feminism, decolonial aesthetics, queer erotics and ecology to form a praxis she has named Intimate Ecologies, working toward liberatory interspecies futures.
Usually based in London, Ama can also be found loitering around the fried egg stalls of Accra, or gallery bookshops in New York City.
about
Ama Josephine Budge - Writer / Artist / Curator
MA Postcolonial Culture & Global Policy, Media Communications & Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK); PhD Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London (UK).
Budge Johnstone is an Associate Lecturer in Culture, Criticism & Curation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (UK) and an MFA tutor at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Her practice as a speculative writer, artist, scholar and pleasure activist navigates that which the author terms ‘Intimate Ecologies’ in order to explore Blackness, aesthetics and queer, pleasurable, interspecies futures. Budge Johnstone’s wider intra-disciplinary work thinks through sustainable ecologies of care and more-than-survival for Black, indigenous, and people of colour (BIPoC) women and queer folk in the arts and academia.
Budge Johnstone has exhibited internationally in several group shows including the Cultural Reforesting Exhibition at the Orleans House Gallery (2025) in partnership with St Mary’s University, Twickenham and Being Human Festival 2025 as part of her ongoing residency at the gallery; On Touching at Jupiter Artland as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2021; Apocalypse Reading Room at Artsadmin, London (2021); The Waters that Move Within Me: Part of ‘Silence is a Commons’ at Casco Art Institute (2021).
Budge Johnstone recently completed her PhD titled Intimate Ecologies: Queer Speculations on Pleasure, Blackness and Decolonial Aesthetics, under the supervision of Dr. Gail Lewis and Dr. Margarita Palacious. In addition, she has published essays, short fiction and art writing internationally, and has exhibited across Europe; the author’s writing was shortlisted for the 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour. Budge Johnstone is a curatorial fellow with Frame Contemporary Art Finland (based in Helsinki) and EVA International, Limerick (Ireland); a participant of the first Postnatural Independent Programme, Madrid (Spain); and was the 2020/21 Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism with Bard College, New York (USA). She participated in the first Postnatural Independent Program, Institute for Postnatural Studies 2023, Madrid (Spain) and was Planetary Fictions Fellow, under the thematic ‘Pleasurable Ecologies - Curation as Future Building’ (2020 -2023), Helsinki (Finland).
Budge-Johnstone joined VIAD as a Research Associate in 2023.
For speaking engagements please contact: assistant@amajosephine.me
For projects please contact: ama@amajosephine.me