Haoua Amadou
Haoua Amadou is a visual artist and Instructor based in Houston, Texas. She earned a BFA with a concentration in Photography from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and her MFA in Studio Art with a focus on photography and digital media from the University of Houston. Amadou is a French citizen from Cameroon. She moved to Louisiana in 2009 and has been in the U.S. since. Amadou's interest in photography stemmed from the darkroom using digital-analog techniques. She loves the aesthetics of the process and the challenges it creates. Her work is an investigation of the challenges of migration and identity ambiguity through the mediums of photography and video. Amadou's work was featured in the Alliance Française de Singapour Finalist for the 10th FSPAA in Singapore.
My work is an autobiography of my journey as a migrant child. I immigrated from Cameroon to France at the age of six. Subsequently, my family moved to Louisiana, where I often felt the francophone connection to my birth country.
The distortion and confusion surrounding my family's immigration journey created a need to investigate my history further. I always found it unfair that the journey of the immigrant parent is acknowledged while the journey of the immigrant child is unaccountable.
My practice explores my inner thoughts and emotions attributed to displacement. Therefore, I use my experience as an adult to revisit what was lost in my cultural transition using photography and interdisciplinary techniques to touch on issues of identity. In my work, recollection of lost memories is explored through family archives and oral stories once told by elders.