Damayanti Wallace

Delacreme Scholar Spotlight: Class of 2020

By Bragard Kizenga

Introduce yourself. Name, pronouns, where you attended school and where you graduated from

I’m Damayanti Wallace, she/her pronouns I’m an interdisciplinary artist from the southside of Chicago. I went to NYU Tisch for Collaborative Arts and graduated in May 2023. 

How did you find the scholarship?

Truthfully, I’m a fan of femdot. and while following his music,  I remember being at YCA and hearing him talk about the struggles of accessibility to education, to see someone discuss the transparency of education while getting a degree mirrored exactly how I felt. I followed the scholarship from there and was reminded of it by my friend Shelli Nicole in 2021 when I applied. 

How did you find your passion within the arts? Did you try a bunch of mediums and fall in love with them or did you always have a love for one?

Art for me has always been a language. It was something I began to understand and when I did, all I wanted to do was absorb it. I think I was a really unorganized artistic kid, like at one point I wanted to be a fashion designer so I asked my mom to put me in sewing classes, then a pianist so I studied piano for 5 years (I hope that’s right) and then, my longest stint, musical theater which I did about 10 years of pre-professional training, when I auditioned for ChiArts, I applied for theater and creative writing. When I found my love for poetry it was much more magnetic than anything else. A blank page was the most expansive and endless art form I had encountered. As I began to apply to college, I asked myself ‘what else can a poem do?’ and I could cornily say the rest is history..but poetry is my access point, everything I made is a long poem. When I fell in love with film at NYU, it was like loving poetry ten fold, I could visualize this thing I had tried to visualize for so long, I could bring these scenes, these poems to life and that’s the culmination of my most recent film ‘Next to Everything

(in relation to the last question)

I see you’ve worked on a NYU thesis film? How’s that experience been?

To expand on my thesis, I truly had a vision and an idea and a wonderful community around me supporting me. My film ‘Next to Everything’ (@nexttoeverythingfilm)  was a labor of love. My experiences as one of three Black people in the Collaborative Arts Program was jarring to say the least, I wanted to leave  a radical shadow of myself in the university. I didn’t want to make something about the things I experienced, I wanted to do something that made the next Black woman feel comfortable enough to tell her story, to lay a foundation that could be built upon. Next to Everything is a fantasy led drama that follows an eighteen year old girl after her aunt passed away and she discovers she has magical powers. As Jazmine, affectionately called Jaz, must navigate the grief of losing her aunt along with learning her new powers; she may find a way to release control in order to access her abilities. 

You're also the co-founder of an organization of GoodKids MadCity? How did that come about and how has working within a community based organization been?

GoodKids MadCity is a youth led gun violence prevention organization that aims to create safe spaces for youth. GKMC is an honor to have co-founded and continue to be a part of. When I was 17 myself and other youth organizers along with other adult mentors from Chicago and Baltimore. As I’ve believed through the years, organizing is a part of my life and art is my passion. As a Black woman growing up in Chicago, I saw, heard and experienced too much to not understand it was a bigger issue than it was being made out to be. I’m proud to be a part of the group of organizers that created GKMC. I feel so thankful to be able to still work with such incredible youth who are continuing to move the needle forward, with initiatives like Roots2Wings, GKMC aims to support families and community members. 

What advice would you give to future Delacreme Scholar?

For future Delacreme Scholars, I would say that something I try to focus on is the passion of art making and the relationship I have with art. Sometimes when the thing you love becomes how money is made,  then the passion may get lost, when you’re feeling that way, find your way back to the passion.