Damali Ayo
- Art Director
- Set Decorator
Damali Ayo grew up in Washington, D.C. She attended the prestigious
Sidwell Friends School on scholarship from grade kindergarten until
graduation. From there she attended Brown University where she studied
politics and American culture. During her time at Brown she also worked
in community involvement, womens issues, and as a writing tutor. She
first started working in theatre and performance at Brown University
where she designed and directed the Women's Prison Project. Through
this program college students taught theatre workshops to inmates at
the Rhode Island women's prison. This program is still running today,
and has inspired several other programs of its kind across the country.
Though she had always been a creative child and person, after college
damali thought she would be a writer. She turned to art when she had a
dream about a visual art collage that would powerfully describe one of
her many experiences with racism at her middle school. She created the
work. When she saw the potent impact this work had on its viewers she
became an artist. In 2003 she created the web-art-performance work
rent-a-negro.com, a Web site that explores the commodification of race
and black people. This site was reviewed in Salon.com and from there
her work became more widely known and viewed by audiences world wide.
Her first book, How to Rent a Negro (2005), was an expansion of the
ideas this website, created as a how-to manual for renters and rentals
to create their own businesses, or judge their own actions with regards
to how they treat others. This landed her an appearance on The Factor (1996) and
several other radio appearances internationally. Damali currently lives
in Portland, Oregon.