Godfried Donkor
Throughout his career, Godfried Donkor has mined historical image archives for images of blackness. Unsurprisingly, these often trace the intersecting histories of colonialism, slavery, intercontinental trade and sport. Using the history of pugilism as one of the cornerstones of his art, the Ghanaian-British artist has made scores of vivid paintings and collages that together constitute a Saints’ gallery of both forgotten and famous boxers.
Among Donkor’s oil, acrylic and paper portraits are images of early champions Bill Richmond and Tom Molineaux—freed American slaves celebrated in the UK in the early 19th century—alongside the likenesses of U.S. boxing legends Jack Johnston, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. Though very much interested in iconicity (in what constitutes a pop image), the artist is also committed to locating his portraits of black boxers in historical context. This accounts for Donkor’s longstanding background use of Financial Times stock pages—to highlight the underlying themes of trade and bondage in his work—as well as references to “battles royal”: instances where white men forced black slaves to fight to the death until there was only one man standing.
— CVF, USFCAM
“My life during the COVID-19 lockdown has been more enhanced. For visual artists who are normally solitary in their practice and routines the changes may at first seem slight. But the loss of community is intense and grows with time. If, as artists, we sometimes crave solitude to work, we also work for our community, our friends our families and neighbors. Without them, who am I working for? The one fundamental fact for me now is that we are all sharing in the same history. In Accra, NYC, Trinidad and Tobago, London, etc….”
— Godfried Donkor
Godfried Donkor works on The First Day of the Yam Custom 1817 at his studio in Accra. Copyright the artist, and courtesy Gallery 1957, Accra. Photo by Nii Odzenma.
About Godfried Donkor
(Kumasi, Ghana, 1964)
He lives and works in London, U.K., and Accra, Ghana.
Godfried Donkor is a British-Ghanaian mixed-media artist whose work mines the socio-historical relationships that have shaped Africa and Europe. His art serves as a reflection on the commercialization of people in all its facets, a complexity of themes that runs like a red thread through his individual series of works. Donkor frequently uses newspaper pages as a background for his collages. His “People of Utopia” occupy a central position on these sheets, with their repeating rows and columns of numbers. Often depicted as saints, his figures are frequently displayed as arising from cross-sections of old sailing ships, a direct metaphor for the transportation of slaves from West Africa to the New World. Donkor’s work is in important international collections, including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); the Smithsonian Museum of African Art (Washington, D.C.); the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York); the Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester, U.K.); the National Collection of Senegal; and the National Gallery of Botswana.
Artist Instagram: @godfrieddonkor
Gallery website: gallery1957.com