Amanda Holiday

Amanda Bintu Holiday (born 1964) is a Sierra Leonean-British artist, filmmaker and poet.

Life Amanda Holiday was born in 1964 in Sierra Leone. She completed the foundation art course at Jacob Kramer College alongside Clio Barnard and Damien Hirst and went on to study fine art at Wimbledon School of Art graduating in 1987.

Holiday was active in the second wave of the Black British art movement, undertaking large-scale figurative mixed-media drawings. The Hum of History, in charcoal and chalk, was "a cyclic story about hope in the 80s". Her work was exhibited in major 1980s black British art exhibitions including Creation for Liberation, Some of us are Brave, Black Art: Plotting the Course and Black Perspectives. It tells the story of a mixed-race teenager, Bira, from the North of England married off to a white boatman. Embarking on her honeymoon, Bira escapes the racism of her everyday life by constructing a fantasy world in which she is a princess. Manao Tupapau looked at the experience of Merahi metua no Tehamana modelling for Paul Gauguin in Tahiti.

From 2001 to 2010 Holiday lived in Cape Town, writing and directing several educational television series. Some of Us are Brave, Black Art Gallery, 1986. With Simone Alexander, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Mowbray Odonkor, Marlene Smith and Maud Sulter. Creation for Liberation 4th Open Exhibition: Contemporary Art by Black Artists. Brixton Village, London. 1987. With Achar Kumar Burman, Margaret Cooper, Zil Hoque, and Fitzroy Sang. The Image Employed: The Use of Narrative in Black Art. Cornerhouse, Manchester. With Simone Alexander, Zarina Bhimji, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Burman, Eddie Chambers, Jennifer Comrie, Claudette Johnson, Tam Joseph, Mathison/George, Mowbray Odonkor, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney, Marlene Smith, and Allan de Souza. Incantations: Reclaiming Imagination. The Black Art Gallery, London. With Georgina Grant and Mowbray Odonkor.