Joshua Donkor

Joshua Donkor is a Ghanaian-British painter whose work uses portraiture as a tool to subvert monolithic portrayals of Black identity.

Joshua approaches portraiture as a collaborative exercise between him and his sitters. His process involves meeting with the subjects of his paintings on multiple occasions and going through their personal effects and photographs. Joshua works with them to identify the images that most potently convey the details of their personal narrative, including family photos, fabrics, and personal belongings. Each portrait he paints includes both the image of the sitter, as well as layered visual references to all of the items they picked out together.

The material depth of the paintings comes about through Joshua’s method of transferring layer after layer onto the surfaces of his paintings. Using a range of different painting and printing and layering techniques, he literally embeds the histories of his sitters into the work. Although the subject matter of Joshua’s paintings is deeply personal and completely idiosyncratic—often having to deal with specific African roots and the individual experiences specific people have had growing up Black in Western societies—all types of viewers have been able to respond deeply to the images. Somehow, widely relatable content is communicated through the specificity of the images.

Open House

Art Yard Maker’s Studio has an open-house policy, so if you‘re visiting our neighbourhood’s major art galleries, Southbank Centre, Tate Modern or Hayward Gallery why not stop by to see an artist at work.