Enam Gbewonyo was born into a family of Ghanaian descent in London in 1980, earning her BA in European Textile Design from the Bradford School of Art and Design in 2001. Through her art, Gbewonyo examines themes such as identity, femininity, and the human condition, using performance and textiles as her primary mediums. Starting in 2016, she incorporated the use of tights into her work, examining how this garment has been manipulated by societal norms to serve as another means of marginalisation, exclusion, and symbolic castration for Black women.
Performance and textile artist and curator Enam Gbewonyo was born into a family of Ghanaian descent in London, England in 1980. Aged seven, her family relocated to Ghana, but she returned to England four years later. She earned her BA in European Textile Design from the Bradford School of Art and Design (2001), later embarking on a career as a knitwear designer in New York. Gbewonyo grappled with the complexities of her dual cultural background and found that it was through her art that she could best address these challenges. Speaking about her heritage, she noted, ‘I’m a Ghanaian Ewe, and historically the Ewe’s trade was primarily weaving and fishing. We are also storytellers. […] It’s no surprise that I am both a textile and performance artist. It’s literally in my blood’ (Turnbull & Asser). Through her art, Gbewonyo examines themes such as identity, femininity, and the human condition, using performance and textiles as her primary mediums. She champions the spiritual restorative power of handcraft, employing techniques like embroidery, knitting, weaving, printing, and wire-work. Starting in 2016, she incorporated the use of tights into her work, examining how this seemingly innocuous garment has been manipulated by societal norms to serve as another means of marginalisation, exclusion, and symbolic castration for Black women, whose skin colours have traditionally been overlooked by the beauty norms of the fashion industry. Gbewonyo repurposed tights, transforming them into individual shapes, yarn, and canvas. She expanded her experimentation by knitting, plaiting, embroidering, burning, trapping, etching, and painting with and on them. Her series of performances Nude Me/Under the Skin explored the complex ways in which the evolution of hosiery intersected with the experiences of Black women. This investigation revealed overlaps across various societal contexts, such as the historical periods of Empire and Slavery; advertising trends from the 1920s to the 1960s; Black nurses serving in the UK's National Health Service (NHS); and the ballet world. Gbewonyo's performances also delve into her family's history, specifically, the women in her lineage – an important figure among them is her great-great-grandmother, whom she knows only from stories passed down by her mother. Gbewonyo has said that she is 'weaving' the narrative of her matrilineal heritage into her performances, engaging in a 'very personal internal dialogue with these imagined characters of who these women are'. According to her, this process represents a moment of 'openness and vulnerability' (Peju Oshin interview).
In 2019, Gbewonyo and Lois Muddiman were commissioned to create a new installation for the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The artwork, titled A Nice Cup of Tea?’ , was a reaction to the museum's exhibits of eighteenth-century European ceramics and drew attention to their connection with commodities produced through slave labour, such as tea and sugar. The installation incorporated shards of broken pottery adorned with historical images of Oxford's Black African and Caribbean community, aiming to underscore the significant contributions of the city's Windrush Generation. In 2019, Gbewonyo took part in the group exhibition Body Poetics at the Giant Gallery, Bournemouth. This show converged two generations of artists, featuring nine feminist artists from the 1970s and 1980s alongside nine contemporary artists of a younger generation. For this exhibition, Gbewonyo crafted a series of site-specific works, which were created in a call-and-response with African-American artist Senga Nengudi. Among other group shows, Gbewonyo has also participated in Transforming Legacies at the Black Cultural Archives (2023), offering a comprehensive overview of the past 40 years of Black British art across various disciplines, such as painting, ceramics, film, and performance art. Another noteworthy exhibition was Rites of Passage, curated by Péjú Oshin, which showcased the works of 19 contemporary artists, all of whom shared a common experience of migration. In 2021 Gbewonyo presented the solo exhibition Nude Me/Under the Skin: A Transcendence at TAFETA Gallery, London, showcasing new textural and sculptural works, the result of months of performance-inspired creation.
As a curator, Gbewonyo is committed to showcasing the works of diaspora artists. Her curated exhibitions include the African and African-Caribbean Design Diaspora Festival at the Bargehouse OXO Tower in London, co-curated with Abi Wright in 2015, and Hapticity: A Theory of Touch and Identity co-curated with Marcelle Joseph at Lychee One, London in 2020. In 2022 she was artist-in-residence at God’s House Tower, Southampton. Her final piece in the show, the knitted artwork Gardez L’Eau, which ran through the entire structure, touched on themes of trade, travel, colonialism, and piracy. In 2015, Gbewonyo founded the Black British Female Artist (BBFA) Collective, a platform dedicated to promoting emerging Black female artists. She was the 2022 recipient of The NAE Exhibition Prize, with an exhibition of her work scheduled at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham in 2023–24. Gbewonyo’s work is not currently represented in UK public collections.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Enam Gbewonyo]
Publications related to [Enam Gbewonyo] in the Ben Uri Library