Born in Ghana, the multidisciplinary artist Godfried Donkor has lived in the UK since childhood. His work interrogates history and culture, while asking questions about empire and the malleability of narratives.
This is manifest in It’s a Numbers Game, the first UK institutional show of Donkor’s work. The exhibition explores the links between Colchester, where it is on display at Firstsite, and Ghana, bringing together two anti-imperialist warrior queens in Boudicca and Yaa Asantewaa. Elsewhere, European heraldry is reinvented, with dreamed-up African coats of arms deftly embroidered onto the salmon pink of Financial Times pages; vivid paintings of Ghanaian boxers in the ring are canonised with gold leaf halos; sharp collages find cut-out figures of African American boxers placed on the same page as copied lithographs of transatlantic slave ships.
The title phrase nods to sports, chance and the unknown, Donkor explains: “How long does it take before one’s number comes up? If not today, then maybe tomorrow … It can mean different things to each of us and that’s what makes its meaning compelling and complex.”
A bold and fascinating oeuvre, the collection layers happenstance, historiography and ambiguity. “My practice is inspired by the space between spaces,” Donkor says. “If my work is sometimes perceived to be about identity, power and resistance, my practice is actually more interested in the spaces between those areas. I am always looking for other unidentified spaces that my imagination can occupy in the quest to make new artworks.”
Godfried Donkor: It’s a Numbers Game is at Firstsite, Colchester, until 30 August