Adora Mba (b. 1986, London) is the founder and director of ADA \ contemporary art gallery, a commercial art  space based in Accra, Ghana, committed to representing emerging artists across Africa and its diaspora. Raised  in London, Accra and Lagos, Mba spent her formative years cultivating a dialogue between her African roots and  European education. Her extensive travels led her to develop a keen interest in contemporary art, and in particular  the African art scene. An art advisor, collector and writer, Mba’s experience working in the contemporary African  art industry nurtured her expertise on the continent’s artistic scene.

Throughout her career, Mba witnessed a bounded African artistic scene,  lacking the infrastructure necessary to achieve its full potential. Responding to this need and to her desire to  support emerging artists, she founded the ADA \ contemporary art gallery in 2020 in Accra.

EKENE EMEKA-MADUKA

Ekene Emeka-Maduka is a Nigerian artist currently living and working in Canada. Ekene's practice is an on going study of the "self". Maduka makes work that combines lived and formulated events relating to notions of displacement, self-representation and reconstructing identity. 

In her work, she aims to share a specific narrative that addresses Blackness, culture, her Nigerian heritage and femininity from a more personal viewpoint as supposed to asserting general statements regarding these topics.

In addressing femininity in her work, Maduka reclaims the gaze that the well-known 19th century Odalisque shies away from holding with her viewers. For her, having the subjects of her paintings hold eye contact with the viewer creates a balance of power and humanizes the subject as such, which is a reoccurring theme. 

SOLA OLULODE

Sola Olulode’s dreamy queer visions explore embodiments of British Black Womxn and Non-Binary Folx. Working with various mediums of natural dyeing, batik, wax, ink, pastel, oil bar, and impasto she develops textural canvases that explore the fluidities of identities. Drawing inspiration from lived experience, friends, and cultural reference points to centre Black Queer Womxn, Olulode emphasizes the integral need of representation and celebration of queer intimacies. 

Her utopian scenes celebrate relationships that transcend crude notions of queer sexuality. Her figures exemplify the warm embrace of queer love, a temporal space to bathe in memories of intimacies abundant with scenes of profoundly deep tender connections. Envisaging a world reflective of the celebration of her own identities Olulode brings to life representation and visibility of Black Queer lived experiences. Her figures represent multifaceted complex individuals and the energy they hold in their bodies relishing in a boundless temporality of self-validation and joy.