Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1993 Wrexham, Wales

Biography

Textile artist Anya Paintsil was born into a family of Welsh and Ghanaian descent in Wrexham, North Wales in 1993. In 2020, she obtained a BA in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art. While studying art, she faced criticism from those who believed that her textile work ‘wasn't a big enough thing’, leading to her firm rebuttal that this sentiment was not expressed towards painters or sculptors: ‘it's important for me not to make work in other mediums. For me, it's important to make this my life's work. Because textile is looked down upon in a lot of ways — less by the art world and more by arts education, arts academics’ (Diop 2022).

Informed by her Welsh and Ghanaian heritage, as well as her upbringing as a mixed-race individual in a predominantly white environment, Paintsil incorporates these diverse influences into her textile artwork, skillfully employing techniques such as rug-hooking, embroidery, and tapestry-making, some of which were taught to her by her grandmother. Her ‘visceral and intriguing’ wall-based textiles (Gural 2022) simultaneously evoke the sensory richness of tactile tapestry while introducing elements of semi-sculptural interventions. Largely autobiographical, her work addresses themes such as personal relationships, trauma, the female gaze, memory, race, collective prejudices and identity. With titles often in Welsh and a deliberate focus on depicting Black figures, her artwork boldly challenges assumptions that being Welsh equates to being white. Employing humour as a means to engage viewers, Paintsil skillfully balances the lighthearted with a profound ambivalence. Her visual imagery often derives inspiration from sources such as the Mabinogion (a collection of Welsh myths), and Ghanaian proverbs, also incorporating elements from Asafo flags (war company flags known for depicting strengths or proverbs). Her piece Anya or Anum (2020), which features an assemblage of ‘disembodied body parts, bits of bodies in different kinds of shades [...] a kind of jumble’, as described by Paintsil (Gale 2020), explores her experience of depersonalisation during childhood, when she was mistakenly identified as any person of colour, regardless of whether mixed race, Black, or South Asian. Human hair has always held great significance in Paintsil's artistic compositions. Her inspiration for incorporating hair came from Adebunmi Gbadebo, a visual artist from New Jersey, USA, who utilises human hair sourced from individuals within the African diaspora in her artwork. Working with hair, Paintsil primarily employs techniques such as punch needling, weaving, and braiding, using both human and kanekalon hair. She also employs latch hooking, a method that involves pulling loops of yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base. A notable example of Paintsil's latch-hooking work is Self Portrait (2018), which consists of over 100,000 individually cut pieces of thread and took approximately six months to create. Another significant work, Rhitta Gawr (2022), features a figure with wide-open eyes and a gaping mouth, directly engaging the viewer. This artwork portrays shock and even horror, as it references the Welsh giant who killed kings and adorned himself with their beards as trophies. According to mythology, the giant was eventually defeated by Arthur, and stones were placed over his body to form a burial mound called Gwyddfa Rhita. In Rhitta Gawr the figure is cloaked in dark hair embellished with coloured plastic hair picks.

Through her practice, Paintsil aims to prompt viewers to contemplate the boundaries of fine art and to challenge concepts of who can be considered an ‘artist’. She achieves this by employing craft techniques that have historically been regarded as decorative or excluded from the high art canon due to their association with utility. Working with Afro hairstyling techniques and materials allows Paintsil to honour her heritage as a Black woman and bring attention to the cultural significance of hairstyling and hair within the African diaspora. Paintsil has stated, "I wanted to make hair not just decorative [...] Hair holds so much cultural significance throughout the diaspora; hair has been used to show whether you're rich or poor, single or married – your status, your identity" (Hannah Traore Gallery).

Paintsil made her London debut with Ed Cross Fine Art at Somerset House’s 1-54 contemporary African Art Fair in 2020. Subsequent solo exhibitions include Glynn Vivian Museum, Swansea (2021) and Ed Cross Fine Art, London (2022). In the same year, Paintsil's work featured in the exhibition What Lies Beneath: Women, Politics, Textiles, at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University, which gathered women artists and collectives from diverse generations and countries, all using textiles as a medium to provide commentary on politics and society. Paintsil was awarded the Wakelin prize in 2021. She is currently based between Manchester and Chester and is represented by Ed Cross Fine Art. In the UK public domain her work is held in collections of the Whitworth Art Gallery; National Museum of Wales; Glynn Vivian, Swansea; Tullie House, Carlisle, and The Women’s Art Collection, University of Cambridge.

Related books

Lynne Stein, Hook, Prod, Punch, Tuft Creative Techniques with Fabric and Fibre (London: Bloomsbury Publishing 2023)
Arimeta Diop, ‘Textile Artist Anya Paintsil Elevates Traditional Craft Techniques into Mythic Works’, Vanity Fair, 30 November 2022
'Weaving a Life Story into Art', Western Mail, 7 August 2021, p. 20

Public collections

Related organisations

Manchester School of Art (student)

Selected exhibitions

Eye of The Collector, group exhibition, Ed Cross Fine Art (2023)
Within + Without, group exhibition, Unit London, London (2023)
Hair Untold Stories, group exhibition, Tullie House, Carlisle (2023)
What Lies Beneath: Women, Politics, Textiles, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge (2022)
Exchanges, group exhibition, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester (2022)
Anya Paintsil: Proof of Their Victories, Hannah Traore Gallery, New York (2022)
We Are All Made of You, Ed Cross Fine Art, London (2022)
Hapticity, a Theory of Touch and Identity, group exhibition, Marcelle Joseph Projects, London (2021)
Bold Black British, group exhibition, Christie’s, London (2021)
Makers Eye, group exhibition, The Craft Council Gallery, London (2021)
In the Beginning, Ed Cross Fine Art, digital group show (2021)
Anya Paintsil, Glynn Vivian Museum, Swansea (2021)
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair London, London (2020)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Anya Paintsil]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Anya Paintsil artist