Godfried Donkor

Godfried Donkor was born in 1964 in Kumasi, Ghana, and moved to London in 1973, where he has lived since. He trained at Central Saint Martins, where he completed a BA in Fine Art, subsequently studied as a postgraduate at Escola Massana in Barcelona, and completed an MA in African Art History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 1995. He has developed a multidisciplinary practice encompassing collage, painting, drawing, printmaking, and installation that engages with the intersecting histories of slavery, empire, sport, religion, and popular culture.

Donkor's work is notable for its use of archival and found imagery — Victorian engravings, nineteenth-century lithographs, Financial Times stock pages, religious iconography, and fashion photographs — which he combines with contemporary materials in collages of considerable historical and visual density. A recurring concern is the figure of the African boxer: Jack Johnson, Mohammed Ali, and historical pugilists appear throughout his practice as subjects that allow him to explore simultaneously the question of Black masculine agency, the spectacle of the Black body in European contexts, and the longer history of Atlantic slavery. Gold leaf functions as a material carrying multiple meanings — wealth, sacrality, the transatlantic gold trade — situating his images within a long history of economic and spiritual exchange.

Donkor was Ghana's representative at the 2001 Venice Biennale and has participated in the Dak'Art Biennale (1998 and 2018). He has exhibited at institutions including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Tate Modern in London. His work is held in public collections including those of the Smithsonian, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. He is represented by Gallery 1957 in Accra and London.