Present Space

The twilight of the millennial generation catapulted a new class of individuals onto the scene, changing what it meant to be at work. The word “multihyphenate” became a marker of one’s ability to play as many characters as on the stage, with a distinct “hyphen-shaped” intermission between each individual expression.

Looking back on more than a decade-long career, British model-advocate-actor-et al Adwoa Aboah is all too familiar with navigating the many identities that can coexist within a single person. From the runway to the screen, from public conversation to the more intimate work of self-discovery and motherhood, her life and career have never been defined by a singular discipline or role. Instead, they have been shaped by the intersections between them—each pursuit informing, challenging and expanding the next.

What makes Aboah’s journey particularly compelling is not simply her ability to occupy multiple spaces, but her willingness to question the expectations that come with occupying them. In an era where professional identity is increasingly fluid and almost entirely self-reflexive, she represents a generation less concerned with fitting neatly into a predetermined mould and more interested in creating room for contradiction, reinvention and evolution.

The hyphen, then, becomes more than a punctuation mark. It is a space for possibility. A reminder that one need not abandon one identity in order to embrace another, nor arrive at a definitive version of oneself to be considered accomplished. Through her work, Aboah offers a compelling portrait of what it means to build a career—and, more importantly, a sense of self—on one’s own terms.

In conversation with her sister and confidant, artist Kesewa Aboah, Adwoa reflects on the pleasure of evolution, the privilege of experience, and the beauty of returning to familiar spaces after a pause—an intermission—with renewed perspective: “Every time I step back in, it just gets better and better. Maybe that’s what people say about age.”

Adwoa Aboah: Better and Better — *Dress: Balenciaga, Shoes: Jude, Earrings: Camille Surault

Didi Udofia

You both move between different worlds of expression—fashion, art, advocacy and beyond. Do you want to start with how these different outlets have allowed you to explore different facets of yourselves?

Adwoa Aboah

Kessy, are you going to ask me? Should we just get into it?

Kesewa Aboah

Yes, how do I start it? Do I go, “Intermission, what does it mean to you?”

I mean, obviously the pauses. That’s what I immediately think of [when I think of] intermission… But I like what you were saying about moving between worlds. That’s something that we both do, and I think people do more than ever now. I don’t think people stay in their lanes, and I appreciate that.

I don’t think you always can anymore. I think the world is more free to express different facets of yourself, but then everyone is also looking for another string to add to their bow because you kind of almost have to, in a way—which maybe is not a bad thing.

Yeah, I do like it. But then you speak to certain people, like art director friends of ours or creative director friends of ours, who have been in the game for so long, and they’re like, “Now anyone can become a creative director because they’ve got a Pinterest board.” I think there’s a confidence that comes with being able to try out different things, and thinking you can try out different things—which I appreciate. What youth culture is bringing to my attention, is that you don’t actually have to pick one thing. Sometimes I do wish I did just have one thing, but it would be hard for me because my interests just aren’t as linear as that, and I feel like I’m just curious and ambitious and want to try things. But I do find it harder than ever, because I think the juggle is overwhelming—but also I’m finding more than ever that my kind of worlds don’t align. Like, I was able to kind of make them run side by side kind of smoothly—

Yeah, but what happens when they’re not?

Yeah, and they just don’t. I feel fractured, [now] more than ever, because the world feels quite fractured and I’ve always felt, especially with my advocacy work and being a model, they are sort of—

—incongruous.

Yeah, incongruous. And such parallel ends of the spectrum, in regards to the messaging and what they’re doing for people in general. I felt like maybe it [used to be] easier, because mental health was more trendy? I don’t know. [Now it feels like] I’m just shouting from the roof tops about the same things that I did back in the day.

I think one of the sad facts about advocacy work, one of the heartbreaking things, is learning that what you’re speaking on—and this is in regards to lots of different types of advocacy work—comes in waves, like fashion trends. Do you know what I mean? Like one day mental health is in and the other day it’s out. And you have to keep banging on the doors regardless of whether you’re in or you’re out. I think learning that fact—well, the rose-tinted glasses come off. Your stuff really becomes [about] the work rather than the passion. It’s like, “Well, I’ve got to fight for this, even though nobody’s listening.”

Yeah, I’m always going to care about it—and it’s not trend-related either. I think this goes back to having lots of different facets to one’s self. I didn’t choose to become an advocate. I didn’t choose to start Gurls Talk in order to have a flourishing career. I needed to care about something. Gurls Talk came first and I was lucky enough that my career thrived because of it… I didn’t think it would bring me covers of Vogue magazine, or whatever it might be. I didn’t know it would lead to the kind of successful things that I’ve had in my life because of it. Whereas, I don’t know if that’s how people think [today]. Is everything premeditated? Is it done in a more materialistic way? Like, an influencer starts a new brand and the brand is to obviously build their profile larger? I don’t know. Has it got that kind of guerilla-style, grassroots, unconscious freedom to it that I feel like I had when I started Gurls Talk? I don’t know.

I think that kind of relates to what you were saying earlier about when everyone decides that they can do all the different facets of [themselves] as a job. I think there is a moment where everyone—to bring it back to the subject—pauses to kind of wait and see whether what you’re doing is done with some kind of integrity or you’re just exploring something for a second. When is something not just a hobby or a skill you’re exploring, [but] your actual vocation? I think that’s probably quite similar to Gurls Talk. Like, you didn’t start it to be a job or a thing. It was a passion. Then you wait and you see, and after—how many years has it been now?

10 years. Over 10 years.

Over 10 years of doing it and it’s like, “Wow.” That’s when you really see the grit and the determination. And I feel like, in a world that’s really fast, where we see so many results and then things dropping off, we’re now at a place where people are looking for long term output to validate things. Does that make sense?

Oh, 100%. It’s perseverance. I always say, and this is completely meaningless, but it’s like toothgems! I’ve had a toothgem for so long and they became incredibly trendy. I’m not saying I started the trend by any means, but I remember it becoming incredibly trendy and I was like, “Fuck, I can’t believe I now have a toothgem and the whole world also has a toothgem.” I was like, “I’m just going to persevere through it. I’m going to persevere through the trend, and people will fall off and be less interested, and at age 70 I’ll still have one and then I’ll show everyone that I wasn’t interested in it because it was a trend, but it was something that I actually love. It was an authentic choice.” And maybe that’s what it is, you know, and maybe this is just a completely stupid metaphor, but how can you persevere through trends and stay true to yourself?

I think you do that by not paying attention to trends, and I don’t think you’re someone who does. If we stay on the analogy of fashion trends, think about anything [you’ve] bought—and you know we’ve got some, because we always talk about this—things that you bought that were totally part of the fashion trend and you got rid of them. Maybe you clung on to them for like three seasons because you were so embarrassed you spent the money on something and then suddenly you were like, “Yeah, I’ve got to get rid of it.”

I know. I know.

But then, in another way… I think we definitely, as a society, have seen [things like] LGBTQ+ become a fashion trend, you know what I mean? Whether it be—

Pride

Pride month. And our friends always go like, “Oh, suddenly everyone’s in a rainbow flag.” And obviously, it’s such a beautiful thing and it’s such an expression, but when it got co-opted by—

—Argos, and fucking Target.

Yeah so not Pride month being bad, but the adoption of it as a trend by brands for a second and now it’s not really at all. And then you see—I mean, we just went to see Tim [Walker]’s exhibition, where this is not just his passion, this is his life. These are his people. This is his community. This is a love letter to them. This is something that he values and has value, and he has persevered in expressing that love and that value for six years. He rode it all the fucking way, and then you get this exhibition. Whether it be the exhibition or whether it be the toothgem or Gurls Talk, seeing somebody ride it all the way home—I think that’s where my attention gets grasped.

What does Justin Bieber always say? What’s he always standing on? You know…

...

When he had that video? You know what I’m talking about.

I don’t, but go on.

Justin Bieber said he’s standing on… he’s standing on business! Justin Bieber’s standing on business, and I actually think Tim’s standing on business. It’s like people who say it with their chest. It’s authority. I mean, the Justin Bieber one… it’s the end of the day. I was just thinking about someone just standing full throttle for something they believe in, and Justin Bieber came to mind.

I was thinking, when you said Justin Bieber, maybe it was something more specific. Because I swear standing on business… I didn’t even know he said that, but I love it.

Yeah yeah. That’s what came to mind.

As sisters, you were each other’s first audience. Have there been moments when you’ve noticed each other’s interest in something before your sister saw it for herself?

I mean, it’s different when it’s your family, but I think it’s the way I approach all people around me in my inner circle, especially my working one. And Kessy, although you’re family and best friend, you also feel like a kind of confidant in every facet of my life. To have someone around you know what you’re capable of before you even know it is just the greatest gift. When Kessy and I discuss things, whether Kessy needs my opinion for art or I need her opinion on something else, there’s no opinion I trust more, because I know that we have synergy. I know there’s also a kind of freedom to the way we discuss things with one another, where there can be critique and there can be opinion without it immediately feeling like someone doesn’t like something or someone doesn’t support someone or someone doesn’t respect someone. There’s an ability we both have where we [can] have discourse with one another and we’re able to detach in a very healthy way. Like I can critique Kesewa’s work in a way that doesn’t make her feel like she’s a piece of shit and not doing things right. It’s a conversation, and I think we both allow it in different areas of our work.

Definitely. What [did] I see in Adwoa? I mean, Adwoa loves clothes—always has done. That sounds like such a blanket statement, but before ever working as a model or ever doing any of the things that she’s done , she always loved clothes, fashion, buying magazines and dressing up, and showing up and trying new things. So, on that level, it doesn’t surprise me at all, not really, that Adwoa became a model. But when she did certain other things that had to do with fashion, for example, when she was doing casting or when her and Georgie started The Veil—

—I completely forgot that I was a casting director once.

Everything had a throughline. Whatever it was going to be, it was going to encompass some element of dressing up and having fun, in a way that I think you’ve always liked to do and that is how you express yourself or one of the ways you express yourself.

I kind of think—and I don’t know if this is the easiest way to do one’s career, because sometimes one has to just kind of mould and be a lot more malleable—but I do think in every moment and every pause, in every intermission in my life, the throughline has been self expression and self. Whether it be casting or Gurls Talk, I do feel there’s a stamp of myself in all of those things. I don’t look back on moments in my life and feel embarrassed or cringed out—

—or that you were lost in something.

Or lost in something or [that] I wasn’t doing something that wasn’t true or authentic. It might not feel true now, but I think even looking back on how my style has changed I don’t feel cringed out. I just know that that felt necessary at that time. It felt necessary to dress like I was coming out of Burning Man for a sec. It felt like that’s how I wanted to express myself. I don’t know. Sorry, that was just a thought, but you carry on.

No, I agree. I think that’s really nice not to have to look back and feel really cringey. And I think, to be honest, if I’m looking back on my experiences with you, that’s probably quite accurate. I think there’s something quite authentic, very authentic about your experience. Always an interest in women as well.

Yeah

Always. We always ran with a large group of women, always did big chats. I think that our values have always stayed with women, and so it didn’t really surprise me when you were in these women circles or women therapy groups. I remember you coming to me and saying, “God, I’m just meeting the most incredible women, and we’re just having these really open and honest conversations.” I really, really remember you saying, “I don’t understand why we don’t have these.” Like outside of recovery or therapy. And so I think having had that conversation with you and then seeing what you’ve created with regards to Gurls Talk, but also just the way you commandeer your life with conversations and asking lots of questions about people and your friends and stuff like that, it just all really makes sense.

It’s so nice to hear that, because when you grow up you… well, you don’t know about yourself. It’s trial and error isn’t it. I look at Shy and I can see her personality brewing, and I just hope she never… It’s so horrible that one spends their teens and 20s hating parts of themselves and resenting parts of themselves, and then actually, as you get older, you embrace them and you celebrate them, because it’s literally why—

—why you are who you are.

Yeah, as cheesy as that. Why you are who you are, but also why you’re able to do the things that you’re able to do. Like I’m just a bit of a heavier person, a deeper, heavier person, and this is something that I really hated growing up, but I wouldn’t be able to do the charity work that I do if I didn’t have that empathy.

I was going to say, “As I get older…” That sounds silly, but what I find so interesting is being able to look back and think, “Oh, perfect. That was there without me knowing about it and now it’s something that I’m honing and that interest is a huge part of my life.” Do you know what I mean? And I think being able to see an interest that was such a natural little thing that caught your eye and now is something that you almost base your career around. It’s so interesting to see when it came into your life. I see it a lot, because I’ve got such a visual representation of it in my artwork, of when a specific thing came to be in my practice or something like that. You know, I’ve been doing a huge chuck out of my studio.

Yeah, how did the first pieces start?

[With] my early metal plates. And now, to have all of these ones that I’ve really developed. I don’t know why metal became an interest of mine or was it always in there? Is it always in there and suddenly it catches your eye and you start honing it? But it’s so interesting to see the first markings of things or scrap pieces of paper or waste bits of metal, and suddenly I made a whole art piece and that’s the first thing to start it.

That’s crazy. I think it’s in you. When I was doing my Ted Talk, I, no joke, went to the attic and I literally was looking through. I just remember writing something about it, like manifesting it. The kind of beginnings of this make-believe Ted Talk that I would one day do if all my dreams and hopes came true. I went up and, I’m not joking, that’s what it was. That was the Ted Talk. I had broken it down and I knew what I was going to talk about, and I wasn’t even conscious of it when I did it. But that morning, the day I did the Ted Talk, I literally went upstairs and I found it and it was all fucking broken down—what I wanted to talk about, without even knowing. There was also a kind of throughline, of having a child and what that meant, but—

You had the experience to back it up.

Experience was always going to be the root of what I was going to talk about—lived experience. How did I know that 10 years ago?

How much do your individual practices shape and interpret those transitions in your life, as opposed to vice versa?

I mean the title of my Ted Talk is “Lived Experiences: The Root of All Knowledge,” so you know that’s what I think, but yeah. Kessy, you go first.

I love that title. I’m really sorry, I didn’t know that was the title of your Ted Talk. I’m going to listen to it. No wait—I came to your Ted Talk.

Yeah, you came! What are you talking about?

Oh, I just didn’t know the title. I love that title. You know, I think about that all the time to be honest with you. Especially when it comes to my practice, like is it the chicken or is it the egg? Sometimes I’ll look at a work and I’ll go, “Oh my god, that’s that,” and I didn’t even mean to make an expression of that thought or that feeling or that experience and yet there it is, materialised. Sometimes you’re trying to make something a direct expression of something and you can’t get it, or you’re not trying to and then later on you look at something and then you go, “Oh look, I made something and that actually kind of relates to what I’m doing now.” I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think it doesn’t work linearly. It weaves in between. Sometimes you’re really conscious and sometimes you have to let go of your consciousness. I think a teacher, while I was at university, said this to me: “You can’t judge your work while you’re making it. You can make decisive decisions while you’re making it, but you can’t critique it and go ‘This is good’ or ‘This is bad’ while you’re making it.” You need to brain dump, word vomit onto the page or through your experiences, whether it’s Adwoa doing something or me doing my work.

Yeah, that’s like storytelling! I think it was [Janaya “Future” Khan] who said this at a Gurls Talk event, but it’s this idea that one shouldn’t tell their story as they are living it and experiencing it.

It’s too many absolutes.

[We] do make so many absolutes. [We] make so many blanket statements… I look back on some of the things that I used to say when I first started Gurls Talk and I think there is a kind of ignorance to those blanket statements. I didn’t really know what I was saying. I was so deep in it. I was newly sober, and so fresh and vulnerable and I was just word-vomiting. I didn’t really appreciate the kind of responsibility that one must take when sharing their story. It’s not about trauma dumping. I don’t have any regrets, but I would do it differently. And I do advocate for it. I just didn’t know I was word-vomiting, because I was—

Well, you did feel those things.

Yeah, I felt all those things… It felt so necessary at that time to share, because I’d never shared before. I’d never really been very honest about my thoughts and feelings, and about who I really was. So I was just like, “Oh my gosh, someone’s asked me how I am and they really want to know. They want to know who I am, so I’m going to tell them. But [your] perspective shifts. I made so many absolutes when I was at the beginning of Gurls Talk—about who I was and what I stood for. And things have evolved. It’s like what happened when COVID hit and I thought I’d hit the jackpot in regards to self preservation and who I was and what brought me joy. Then I was like, “Oh my God, I couldn’t be further away from that.” It was an identity shift. Then bring on being a mother! Another identity shift. It’s like you said: there’s this throughline of self, but these two sides running in and out of each other all the time. I think you’ve just got to be ready for it. I don’t make absolute blanket statements about being a mother, because I don’t fucking know. I’m in it. I’m in the depths of it right now. I know bits and pieces, but I’m not about being a spokesperson or being all-knowing on topics I choose to talk about.

I think you also realise as well that blanket statements and those absolutes, they really do show your naivety and your innocence. As you get older, you listen to people and you realise no older person really speaks in that way. It’s this beautiful thing about being young and trying to just assert one’s self outside of those things.

Yeah! Maybe you just need to.

I just have this vision of [us] being young, being youthful, and finally having opinions on things and knowing a little about something and having [some] experience under our belts—maybe one or two big experiences under our belts, like heartbreak, on one end, or much weightier, drug abuse or all of these things—and so, suddenly, [you’re] going through something and then out of it and you’re like, “Ok, this is what this means.” Then, as you get older, you have millions of experiences and they just keep on coming and all you know is that you learn a new thing from each one, and then the next one teaches you a whole other thing that is completely in contrast to what you thought you had already learned and actually that’s basically what you’re learning at every single second.

But that’s that experience. It’s the experience that solidifies the knowing. That’s what grounds it. You can say all the things and you can spit this narrative, but I think you’re so right, there is something quite beautiful about it. Like when you talk to young people and they’re so opinionated and you’re like, “Yeah, all these things make sense until you’re actually in it.” But then you suddenly realise, when you have a child—you know, I’ve preached talking to your children about this and creating spaces like this and making sure you’re there. I’ve preached all of this stuff and now I actually have to put it into practice. It’s so mad. I really stand by everything that I’ve done with Gurls Talk and all the people I’ve had the great privilege of speaking to, but there’s something very different [between] discourse and actually experiencing things. Who knows what will happen. Shy will inevitably go through things that are completely out of my control and how will I—

—naturally react?

How will I naturally react? Will I be able to practice the things I’ve preached for so long? I mean, I hope so, but I don’t know. It’s just very interesting. It’s like my sobriety has changed so much over the years. I think about the situations I would throw myself into in order to promote this facade that I was still fun, and this and that. It feels so different. I’m kind of jumping from topic to topic, by the way.

To bring it back to intermission, how important do you think it is to take an intermission or a pause through it all? And have these intermissions and pauses shaped how you can even stand to live and tell it all today?

I think it’s almost my biggest priority. And not to just sort of say truisms and naff sentences that we’ve heard a million times over, but it is all just really fast, isn’t it? The world, different jobs, life, family. And, to be able to be creative, to be able to have conversations and talk about your interests, to even have [the] energy for your friends and your family, I think you have to take a lot of time for yourself [to] sharpen the axe. Look after yourself, read some books, take some stock, and then pop out and be a really large expression of yourself. I just think it’s really important to take time for yourself, especially off the back of a couple of different art shows. And so now I’m doing a spring cleaning and going to a couple of different art shows and doing some reading and also just taking a minute to not think so much and do a bit of the house keeping and stupid shit. That enables you, when it’s time to go, to really really go. I think taking stock and having a moment to oneself is a really important part of my life and occurs probably, really paramountly, once a year in the winter. Adwoa?

I mean, you know me. It’s everything to me.

We’re quite big on pausing.

I don’t know how people function when they’re around people all the time. I need to have moments to live my life without talking about it or even sharing an opinion with someone or hearing anyone else’s opinion. I remember my therapist said this to me once. We talked so much about being a mother and my fears around it and what it was going to be like and this and that and trauma and all the things, and she was like, “I think it’s time you just go and do it now. Let’s just see how it goes.” And I really think that’s how my moments of stillness influence everything, like how one book will lead me to doing a project. It kind of reignites things in me that I can’t possibly put into words. I’m drained if I’m around people. For me, it’s integral to keeping sane and alive and well that I have time to myself. And I’m not one of those people who needs everyone’s opinion on everything in order to make a decision. I actually just need stillness, because I need to be present. I need to have my feet on the ground. Kessy knows. I’m the person that hasn’t talked to a friend for 5000 years, but is having some kind of in-depth conversation with a taxi driver. I take so much from my experiences of solitude and just being on my ones. I do need community. I am the biggest spokesperson for that, but I also take pride in how much I also appreciate my own company and what that gives me and what that looks like. The thing with me is that I work, work, work. And Kessy’s the same. If there’s one thing our savage mother taught us, it’s our impeccable work ethic—sometimes to our detriment.

I think our jobs and our lives have natural pauses. When I say “our” I mean us, not everyone. The jobs that we do, our jobs are quite project-based. They all link up but Gurls Talk, there’ll be something they’re working on for months and then it comes to fruition and then maybe there’s a natural pause with that. Then with fashion, you have the fashion weeks but there’s moments in fashion when everyone takes a beat, like August or whatever. Actually, it’s kind of less so like that—

I think it’s Christmas.

I was about to say, you were working all throughout August. But I think, more so than the fact we take these pauses, when there is a natural pause in mine or Adwoa’s career, if we’re just talking work-wise, or a moment when we need to just take ourselves out, we just make sure that we do that.

Yeah. I just hold so much value in stillness and moments of pause. It’s something I’m still learning and something that I didn’t see value in. I saw it as a kind of digression or that it took me away from what was relevant. Whereas, over the years, I’ve had to check my ego and see those moments of pause as something I can take from, instead of something that could make me feel like I’m not doing enough. Like not taking part in fashion month, that was a choice. These moments of pause are a choice. That’s the beauty of them. I was able to do other things. I was able to be in places that I wouldn’t have been able to if I had been at fashion month. And it isn’t me losing my position in fashion… Stillness and intermission and pause is not you losing your relevance. You don’t need to be at every single party all the time. That’s not where I find my value, and if that’s where my value lies then I just can’t play that game. I kind of refuse to play that game, because it’s unhealthy for me. I’ve done that. I had to do that when I first started modelling. You just run from job to job, you’re making the most of what maybe could be a moment. But I think that my longevity and my career will come from taking stock and having moments where my life is fulfilled in other areas.

I also think you really learn through trial and error. When you go and do something when you’re feeling a bit angsty and weird,actually that is all reflected back on you. You really learn that it’s best, in those times in your life when you’re a bit fucking drained and don’t have much to give, to do the more nurturing stuff, so that then you can go out and be—I wouldn’t even say be your best self, I think just be yourself. When you’re really tired, overworked, oversocialised, and don’t know which way is up or down, there’s nothing worse.

There’s nothing worse than coming home and feeling like, “Oh, I was fucking weird and I felt weird and I know I was being weird and I didn’t feel like myself.” It’s nicer to just be home and then you pop out and you’re yourself and you’ve got stuff to give and that feels great. It is trial and error. I wish we just knew [ instinctively], but sadly we don’t. I think pause is so necessary. There’s a kindness to the moment of pause…

When one thinks about intermission in the theatrical sense, after an intermission there is always another part of the performance. What’s on the other side for you?

On the other side lies, I don’t think a different hat or a different personality [but] a better understanding of self. It’s not some happy ending either, because we know that’s not true for lots of people and lots of different situations. I’m a big theatre-goer and I feel like after the intermission we know the character better. And I feel like after a pause I know myself a bit better and I know everyone else a bit better, [too]. I know what I need and don’t need… I just feel like, every time I step back in, it just gets better and better. Maybe that’s what people say about age. I feel more boundaried, but more excited. I feel so incredibly excited by all that’s to come, because I know how to take it in my stride.

I love what you’ve just said. I hadn’t even thought about it like that, but I think that’s perfect.

Adwoa Aboah: Better and Better
In conversation with Kesewa Aboah

Credit List

Adwoa Aboah: Better and Better In conversation with Kesewa Aboah

Credit List

Adwoa Aboah: Better and Better
In conversation with Kesewa Aboah