Worldfaze presents “BEHIND THE CURTAINS” by Samuella Graham

Worldfaze Art Practice is pleased to present ‘Behind The Curtains’, an exhibition of works by artist
Samuella Graham, created during her residency early this year. The exhibition runs from October 25
to November 30, 2025.
Across many societies, including Ghana, menstruation remains a subject shrouded in silence, myth,
and shame. Often considered impure or taboo, menstruating women and girls may be excluded from
communal life, denied access to religious spaces, cooking duties, or even social participation. In
many cases, such stigma leads to isolation, misinformation, and internalized shame that lasts well
beyond adolescence.
This exhibition by Samuella confronts these inherited beliefs through abstraction, fragmentation,
and unapologetic visibility. Samuella’s abstract compositions, rendered in hues of red paint, become
a visceral language, evoking both the physicality of menstruation and the emotional weight it carries.
A recurring technique in the works, which is pixelation, is not merely aesthetic but rather suggests
distortion, censorship, and partial visibility as a result of Samuella’s condition being Myopic, which
also echoes the fragmented understanding of menstruation shaped by cultural silence.
The color red is central, not only as a reference to blood, but as a declaration of life, rhythm, and the
undeniable presence of the female body. In these works, red flows, seeps, pulses, and interrupts,
insisting that menstruation be seen, acknowledged, and respected.
In Ghana, as in many parts of the world, menstruation myths continue to affect daily life. From
young girls missing school due to a lack of sanitary products, to women being discouraged from
participating in religious rituals or public leadership while on their period, the social cost of
menstrual stigma is real. But slowly, that narrative is shifting through education, advocacy, and now,
art.
Within the exhibition, Samuella creates flowers made with pads, tampons in a red coloured pot that
highlights the products used during menstruation, and thrifted white panties stained with red dye,
hung up where no one can look away.
Samuella chose to use oborɔni wawu (second-hand) underwear for a reason. These garments have
lived other lives; they’ve been worn, stretched, and carry their own private stories
This exhibition invites viewers to reflect deeply:
What have we been taught to believe about menstruation?
Who benefits from that silence?
And what becomes possible when we choose to speak, paint, and bleed in truth?
Through this body of work, the artist does not offer solutions, but a space: a space to see
menstruation not as shameful or hidden, but as elemental, a natural cycle that carries its own
dignity, its own power.
Samuella Graham, professionally known as Samo, is a multidisciplinary artist based in Accra, Ghana.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Design from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
and Technology (2019) and works as a creative director in advertising while maintaining an active
fine arts practice.
Graham’s distinctive pixelated painting technique combines her graphic design background with her
personal visual experience shaped by myopia.
Her work has been exhibited at Windsor Gallery in Lagos (2024), AZZ-Art in Abidjan (2023), and
various venues in Accra. She contributed to an ancestral project at the Nkyinkyim Museum, Ghana,
in 2022.
Most recently, Graham concluded a residency program at Worldfaze Art Practice, where she created
a body of work that speaks about menstruation, further establishing her commitment to addressing
important social issues through contemporary art.