Kimathi Donkor (born in 1965) is a London-based contemporary British artist whose paintings are known for their exploration of global, black histories. His work is exhibited and collected by international museums, galleries and biennials including London's National Portrait Gallery,[1] the British Museum,[2] the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial,[3] the 29th São Paulo Art Biennial[4] and the 15th Sharjah Biennial.[5] He is of Ghanaian, Anglo-Jewish and Jamaican family heritage,[6] and his figurative paintings depict "African diasporic bodies and souls as sites of heroism and martydom, empowerment and fragility...myth and matter".[7]
Early life and education
Donkor was born in Bournemouth, England, in 1965.[4] He has said of his background: "I was born in the UK to an Anglo-Jewish mother and Ghanaian father, but was raised by my adopted parents who were from Jamaica and the UK. We lived for a time in Zambia, Central Africa, where my adopted dad worked as a vet. I finished my schooling in the west of England, then moved to London, where I eventually settled. In the meantime, my adopted parents had divorced and remarried, so the family diversity actually increased, as Zambians also joined the party. This smörgåsbord life induced an early sense of the wondrous, and sometimes maddening, complexity of identities and histories, which, I think, has been reflected in my artworks. Precisely because I was such an intimate witness to the multiple crossings and re-crossings of stories, images and journeys from around the world."[8]
Donkor's artwork is primarily known for his figurative paintings about significant people and events from Black History. Sunday Times art critic, Waldemar Januszczak noted that "As a genre, history painting has remembrance and societal education as its chief objectives. Donkor adds unexpected lyricism and delicacy to the mix".[20] And, writing for Third Text in 2023, critic Akin Oladimeji described Donkor's 2004 painting Toussaint L’Ouverture at Bedourete as a "Highly atmospheric... haunting work" that depicted renowned freedom fighter Toussaint L'Ouverture as "devoid of doubt, resolute and determined to bring about the end of slavery with his men clearly ready to die by his side."[21] In an analysis of the 2005 painting Coldharbour Lane: 1985, art historian Eddie Chambers asserted that Donkor's history paintings "fearlessly tackle key, dramatic, monumental moments of African diaspora history ... with a painterly preciseness that borders on aesthetic frugality".[22] And, according to art critic Coline Milliard, Donkor's works are "genuine cornucopias of interwoven reference: to Western art, social and political events, and to the artist's own biography".[23] In 2005, Time Out magazine reported that officers from London's Metropolitan Police had entered the Bettie Morton Gallery to demand the removal of one of the artist's paintings, Helping With Enquiries (1984), from his solo exhibition Fall/Uprising (which addressed policing controversies). Gallery staff refused to comply and police later issued a statement that "no further action" would be taken against the painter.[24]
The artist's "Queens of the Undead" paintings[25] depict historic female commanders from Africa[26] and the African Diaspora,[27] but with contemporary Londoners as models.[28] Prior to featuring in Donkor's 2012 solo show at London's Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), works from the series were exhibited at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in São Paulo, Brazil, for the 29th São Paulo Biennial in 2010.[4]
Caroline Menezes suggested that Donkor's work, "articulates a hidden history, tales of the past and chronicles of suppressed voices",[6] with figures such as Nanny of the Maroons, Nzinga Mbande, Stephen Lawrence, Joy Gardner, Toussaint L'Ouverture[29] and Jean Charles de Menezes among the subjects addressed.[30] Writing about his 2013, London solo show, Daddy, I want to be a black artist, Yvette Greslé proposed Donkor as “one of the most significant figurative painters, of his generation, working in the United Kingdom today”.[10] In 2017, writing about his work at the Diaspora Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale, Phil Brett noted that Donkor, "known for his dramatic figurative art of key moments of black history, whether the subject is the murder of Stephen Lawrence or Nanny of the Maroons leading slave rebellions in Jamaica, has a direct style, which never tries to over-complicate". In 2019 he won the DiLonghi Art Projects Artists Award at the London Art Fair.[31]
^Bernier, Celeste-Marie (1 January 2019). Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965–2015. University of California Press. ISBN9780520286535.
Anjos, M., & A. Farias, 2010, 29th Bienal Documentation, São Paulo: Fundação de Bienal São Paulo, ISBN978-85-85298-37-1
Anjos, M., & A. Farias, 2010, 29th Bienal Catalogue, São Paulo: Fundação de Bienal São Paulo, ISBN978-85-85298-33-3
Barbrook, R., 2014. Class Wargames: Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism, Minor Compositions; distributed by Autonomedia (New York), ISBN978-1-57027-293-6
Benci, J., 2012, Fine Arts 2011-2012, British School at Rome (Rome), ISBN978-0-904152-64-7
Bernier, Celeste-Marie, 2019. Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965–2015. University of California Press. ISBN9780520286535
Dibosa, D., et al. 2012, Kimathi Donkor: Queens of the Undead Iniva (London), ISBN978-1-899846-54-2
Chambers, E., 2014, Black Artists in British Art: A History from 1950 to the Present, I.B.Tauris (London and New York), ISBN978-1-7807-6271-5
Eshun, E., 2024, The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, National Portrait Gallery (London), ISBN9781855145580
Kaisary, P., 2014, The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination, London and Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, ISBN978-0-8139-3546-1
Miranda, M., & A. Páscoa, 2014, Offline: Between Transits and Journeys, Lisbon: XEREM Associação Cultural, ISBN978-989-97183-1-9
Miller, M., 2013, Seeing Through, London: Tate Young People's Programmes
Parker, R., 2021, A Brief History of Black British Art, Tate Publishing (London), ISBN978-1849767569
