Kojo Marfo was born in Kwahu Tafo, Ghana, in 1980. He immigrated to London in the early 2000s to pursue higher education in the arts but did not complete his formal studies. He is a largely self-taught artist who is now established as a painter exploring themes of spirituality, injustice and womanhood, mixing Akan and Western styles.
Artist Kojo Marfo was born in Kwahu Tafo, Ghana, in 1980. When he was about seven or eight years old, he moved from his rural, mountain hometown to Accra, Ghana to stay with his grandmother, living with her while his mother was studying in London and Paris and when she remarried. He was brought up within a matriarchal system with a grandmother who was both Catholic and a traditional healer, and a Jehovah’s Witness mother, while his uncles served as father figures. Marfo belongs to the Akan culture and has stated: ‘In that part of Ghana, where I come from, our culture we inherit from our mothers,’ (Marfo quoted in Durrant, 2023). His academic journey first included attending art courses at the University of Ghana. In the 1990s, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, USA, enrolled at New York University and briefly worked as a butcher, but returned to Ghana after two years, before completing his studies. After a brief stay in his native country, he immigrated to London in the early 2000s and enrolled at Central Saint Martins (UAL), focusing on African art and textiles. However, Marfo found the academic approach to art education restrictive and too uniform across these various institutions. This led him to leave formal education, opting instead to cultivate his art independently and to operate as a self-taught artist.
Marfo has had an interest in art since childhood, with his grandmother having a defining influence on his practice. Being in her company, and in the presence of African artifacts and Akan deities with a mythological connection to the spirit and the saint world, shaped his art. The akua’ba, a wooden fertility doll in Akan art gifted to women of childbearing age, is a particularly important reference point in terms of style and content. His initial foray into art began with drawing puppets he saw on children's TV programmes every Saturday morning. Conforming to the usual depiction of Ghanaian deities in red and black, his early paintings were in only these two colours, with a thematic aim to challenge the idea of the ‘primitive’ in African religion. His relocation to New York in the 1990s exposed him to the city's vibrant graffiti culture and the African art in local galleries.
His oeuvre subsequently evolved into a multidisciplinary practice driven by discontent with societal disparities. As such, it developed a dual conduit: it became an avenue for personal discovery as well as a platform in which to juxtapose fond memories of childhood against the stark realities of contemporary life, with an emphasis on cultural hybridity and universal heritage. Marfo's works span a wide range of themes, from examining the influence of religion and spirituality in today's world to addressing issues such as womanhood, prostitution, globalization, the importance of cows, and the dynamics of human connections, and he is motivated by a desire to confront issues that are often avoided in everyday discourse. His resulting oeuvre is a melange of TV puppets, urban street art, and African cultural influences, expressed through dynamic, linear, and vividly coloured characters. His paintings often feature an array of diverse, imposing figures that seem to emerge like visions, engaging the viewer with their intense gaze, often accompanied by the inclusion of bold text. He cites Francis Bacon, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso as his early influences, although he is regularly compared to Basquiat. Marfo calls his style Afro Expressionism and often mixes Akan iconography with Western expression.
Marfo regularly exhibits with London’s JD Malat Gallery. The 2021 exhibition titled Kojo Marfo: Dreaming of Identity was his UK debut solo show. It showcased a portrait series Strangers, capturing Marfo's brief interactions with people in London, alongside six larger pieces portraying families, animals, and communal scenes. Kojo Marfo: Gatekeepers of Heritage was the title of the 2022 exhibition which captured his time in Brooklyn in the late 1990s, when he immersed himself in local graffiti artist circles. Akan art, Western art, graffiti, and diverse cultural stories came together in this exhibition. In 2023, he was part of a group exhibition Africa Supernova, alongside 153 other African artists who explored their self-image against a global background, held at Amsterdam’s Kunsthal KAdE. Kojo Marfo splits his time between London and Saltash, Cornwall—where he has a son with an ex-partner—and he maintains a studio in Streatham, south London. Kojo Marfo's work is not represented in the UK public domain.