From the pages of the financial press emerge the ships of the slave trade: Donkor traces the genealogy that binds the commodification of bodies to the markets of the present.
Godfried Donkor (b. 1964, Accra, Ghana) moved to London at the age of eight and lives and works today between London and Accra. His first vocation was fashion: it was only at the urging of his teachers that, at fourteen, he turned to painting, though textile, dress and adornment have never left his practice. He studied art at Central Saint Martins, London, where he first encountered collage, continued with postgraduate studies at the Escola Massana in Barcelona, and completed an MA in African Art History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1995.
Of Asante descent, Donkor has long been concerned with the trajectories of the African diaspora and with the historical and sociological relationships between the peoples of Africa and Europe, above all the commercialization of the human being and the rise of the African diaspora in the Atlantic world. Archival research and travel are core to his practice, tracing routes and philosophies that span from West Africa to the Americas. His signature collages layer figures over pages of the financial press, lace and sheet music, so that colonial ships surface from market data and the genealogy binding the transatlantic slave trade to modern capitalism becomes visible. A recurring theme is the Black man as agent of his own destiny, explored through the history of boxing: from the celebrated series dedicated to eighteenth-century Black pugilists to works such as "Powerman" and "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali" (2022), which interpolate the language of comics. His enduring bond with fashion emerges in series such as "Jamestown Masquerade" and in his design of the Ghana national football team kit for Puma in 2012.
Donkor won the Prix de la Révélation at the Dakar Biennale in 1998 and was named a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow in 2023. In 2017 Gallery 1957, Accra, presented his solo exhibition "The First Day of the Yam Custom: 1817", curated by Koyo Kouoh, reworking the earliest recorded visual document of Asante aesthetic life. In 2026 he takes part in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, "In Minor Keys", conceived by Kouoh, presenting the newly commissioned "Michael and the Dragon II" alongside works from the 2017 exhibition, in homage to the late curator. The same year he opens his first UK institutional solo exhibition at Firstsite, Colchester, participates in "Tirailleurs: Trials and Tribulations" at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and in "After the Fire" at Black Liquid Art Gallery, Rome. His works are held in the Government Art Collection, UK, Gallery Oldham, and the Tia Collection, among others.