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.
“To be queer and African”, GALA Queer Archive and VIAD’s Radical
November 2025
On Monday, 14 July 2025 a roundtable of queer artists and researchers sat together to discuss issues of land, climate justice, African migrations and how these contribute to ideas of “self”— “other” that hinder Africa’s future. The African and Afrodiasporic artists and researchers were invited to explore creative tools for making Africa possible for contemporary queer people and those in the future.
Apocalypse Reading Session
Performative Book Festival, Kampnagel
May 2025
The portal invites visitors to linger, browse, delve deeper, and exchange ideas in another time. The APOCALYPSE READING SESSION activates the concept of the literary time capsule: Invited authors and artists bring texts that help people survive (or even survive) in the apocalypse and discuss them with the audience.
VIAD
18 October 2023
As part of the Creative Microbiology Research Colab’s (CMRC) Intra-Actions public programme, newly appointed VIAD Research Associate Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone welcomes her longtime colleague and friend Eric Gyamfi, a Ghanaian photographer experimenting with the hybrid nature of analogue, digital and chemical processes into a conversation exploring ecological chemical processes, Black, queer erotics, interspecies futures.
22nd - 24th June 2023
Now in its fifth edition this year’s festival focuses on relationships between performance, ecology, and the creation of new myth. Through a series of performances, discussions, and films it considers the creation of new mythologies and ecological transition as we enter collectively into precarious and unknown futures.
14th May 2023
In the panel, we discuss why speculative writing is powerful, what the genre's tradition is from a marginalised perspective, and what constitutes current queer or neurodivergent, Black, Afro-German or migrant speculative fiction.
Ama Johnstone - Intimate Ecologies: Queer Speculations on Pleasure, Blackness and Art
September 2022
'Commons, Wilds, Infrastructures' is a research project led by Dr John Bingham-Hall, as part of the Banister Fletcher Global Fellowship, a fellowship opportunity piloted by the University of London Institute in Paris in partnership with the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
The core of the research will be around three collective walks, programmed for Spring 2022 in Paris and in London, each (literally) exploring public atmospheres at three different scales. This work will connect infrastructural critique to public sphere theory, design research and studies of urban ecology.
19 March 2022 – 20 March 2022
After Growth is a symposium, taking place both online and in-person.
Together, they will speculate on the possibility of life after growth, placing these at the heart of a city with increasingly green ambitions.
The Beginnings of the Outside
Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021
South African Collective 'Made You Look''s first episode in The Gardens of Others podcast, a three part series exploring the ways in which people’s relationships with plant life and the land, serve as a microcosm of not only the concerns of contemporary political life, but also of the ways in which we might learn to live together.
Ama Josephine Budge interview for a-n Rural Assembly
November 2021
Taking place online, Assembly Wirksworth: Rural will focus on rurality, activism and climate change. Led by Haarlem Artspace, this two-day event aims to discuss and make more visible the work that artists do within rural contexts, whilst also exploring how ‘place’ affects ‘practice’.
A series of provocations introduced through film, interviews and soundscapes will lay the ground for artists to share their practice and consider how the impact and awareness of climate change has affected their work and surroundings.
Round-table - Group of the FUTURE: With Ama Josephine Budge, Julieta Aranda, Pauliina Feodoroff
September 2021
In this round-table participants participants imagine that they travel to the year 2161 and continue to live there at their current age. The conversation departs from the fictional scenario of the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Art and Climate Change (IPACC), and gives a retrospective evaluation of its importance, shortcomings, and impact on future societies and artistic practices.
Wit(h)ness: A Capp Black Study on Intimacy
October 2021
Phoebe Boswell, Cyrus Cassells, & Ama Josephine B. Johnstone in Creative Conversation
On Art, Ecology, and Sustainable Curating
17 May 2021
Conversation with Essi Vesala about ecology and contemporary art, as well as ecologically sustainable curating.
Dortmund|Cologne Int. Women's Festival
Free the Gaze
21 April 2021
9th discussion on the status of women* in film business and gender equity.
"In a Liberated Future, I Imagine..."
March 2021
We asked Ama Josephine Budge and Munotida Chinyanga to respond to our artist provocation 'In a Liberated Future, I Imagine..." as part of The Spatial Imagination.
The Spatial Imagination was a convening over two days which channeled the abundance of ideas, passion, excitement and work of those at the intersection of art, culture, design and spatial practice.
Jan van Eyck Academie
03
27 February 2021
Discussion of the prospects and challenges of the Intergovernmental Panel on Art and Climate Change in a speculative role-play between the present and the future generations
Chronogram
Chronogram Conversations Presents Taking It To The Streets
1 February 2021
Panel discussion that explored how artists, educators, institutions, and the public can forge a grassroots regional coalition to bring activist art to a wider audience in the Hudson Valley.
Serpentine Podcast
Back to Earth: Queer Currents
August 2020
Hosts Victoria Sin and Kostas Stasinpoulis together with guests Ama Josephine Budge, Macarena Gomez-Barris, and Jack Halberstam ask "where does wildness live" and explore desire, pleasures, queer resistance, and affinity with apocalyptic world-making.
ArtEZ studium generale
Ama Josephine Budge & Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide: Tales from the Abyss
13 May 2020
A conversation with Ama Josephine Budge, moderated by Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, curator at the Van Abbemuseum
Glasgow School of Art Sustainability
Climate Colonialism Ama Josephine Budge
27 February 2019
Keynotes speaker as part of the "Challenging Climate Colonialism" seminar, held at Glasgow School of Art
ONCA Arts
Lost Species Day 2018: Programme 'Some of Us Did Not Die'
2019
Conversation with project curator Imani Robinson at ONCA Barge exploring the intersections of racial justice, ecological justice and biodiversity.
UCL Arts & Humanities, Social & Historial Sciences
IAS Turbulence: Feminist Futures for Turbulent Times
2019
Ama Josephine Budge (Psychosocial Studies, BBK), Polly Gould (Newcastle University & Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL), Christine (Xine) Yao (English, UCL), Katie Stone (School of Arts, Birkbeck)
A Shoal of Lovers Lead Me Home
2018
For this event, Ama read from A Shoal of Lovers Lead Me Home, published as an essay in Anathema. Spec from the Margins (2018). This was followed by a conversation between Ama and Barbara Mahlknecht, Jessie McLaughlin and Romeo Gongora.
The Colour Green: Podcast
June 2019
Ama chose Hamstead Heath in North London for her walk, taking us on a journey through a childhood split between London Cornwall and Accra.
Fierce Productions UK
Interview and Reading by Ama Josephine Budge
Fierce Productions' series of 'quick and dirty‘ interviews, celebrating our QTIPOC kin folk, fellow travelers, wandering stars, kindred spirits, mischief makers and cultural nomads.
prior speaking engagements
Reading at Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities, Frame Contemporary Art Finland (2021)
What Shall We Build Here Festival, ArtsAdmin (2021)
Withstanding Podcast, The Finnish Cultural Institute New York (2021)
Keynote Lecture at Fragments and Fractures Conference, Birkebeck (2020)
Guest speaker at Mister Motley and ArtEZ stadium generale (2020)
University of Minneapolis (2019)
National Women’s Studies Association, San Francisco (2019)
Keynote In Conversation with Professor Saidiya Hartman & Dr. Gail Lewis, The Art of Not Doing Conference, Birkbeck (2019)
Keynote Lecture on Climate Colonialism, Glasgow School of Art (2019)
Interrogating Archives, Birkbeck University (2019)
The Colour Green Podcast with Baroness Lola Young, Julie’s Bicycle (2019)
Queer-feminist Ecocriticism in Live Art & Visual Cultures, CUNTemporary (2019)
The Future’s Venture Celebration: Provocation Weekender, Walk the Plank, Salford, (2019)
Cyborgs, Wellcome Collection (2019)
Josephine Budge and guest author Sara Saab, b.Dewitt Gallery (2019)
Listening Legacies of Queerness, Science Fiction and Writing Gender: a reading group with Ama
Feminist Futures for Turbulent Times: The legacies of Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin, UCL University (2019)
Queer Black Performance Colloquiem, Oxford University (2019)
Speculative Climate Stories Angela Chan and Ama Josephine Budge, Iniva (2019)
The Apocalypse Reading Room: In Conversation with Jay Bernard, Free Word (2019)
Keynote Lecture/Reading at Goldsmiths University, London (2018)
Fugitive Feminisms, ICA, London (2018)
Africa Utopia Festival, Southbank Centre, London (2018)
Art & Activism, UCL, London (2018)
Curatorial Care, Humanising Practices Conference, VIAD, Johannesburg (2018)
Pleasuring the Visual, V&A Friday Late, London (2018)
Rethinking Love, Sex and Desire, Consented at Birkbeck University, London (2018)
Mothering Blackness, Autograph ABP, London (2017)
Queer Grime Movements, Karnage at Uniqlo Tate Lates, London (2017)
Black British Resistance, Take Back the City at Goldsmiths University (2017)
Founder and Convener of I/Mages of Tomorrow anti-conference, Goldsmiths University (2017)
Decolonising Feminism Conference, Wits University, Johannesburg (2016)
London Feminist Conference, Hilton Hotel, London (2015)
Women of the World Festival, Southbank Centre, London (2015)