ANYA PAINTSIL

Anya Paintsil is a Welsh and Ghanaian textile artist based in Glyn Ceiriog, North Wales.

Her practice brings together her lived experience in rural Wales and the figurative textile traditions of her Fante heritage. Combining rug making, appliqué and hand embroidery—techniques learned in childhood—with Afro hairstyling practices, she creates large-scale portraits that move between textile and sculpture. Her figures explore the expressive possibilities and politics of representing the Black figure beyond naturalistic conventions.

Rooted in West African traditions of woodcarving, sculpture and mask making, Paintsil’s visual vocabulary challenges interpretations of her work through the lens of “primitivism”. By translating forms associated with hard materials into soft textile constructions, she examines the gendered distinctions embedded in artistic production, with particular attention to the labour of working-class women.

Paintsil works primarily with discarded, found and repurposed fabrics, carrying forward a family tradition in which nothing is wasted. These materials establish a continuity between inherited practices, everyday acts of making and contemporary artistic expression.

Her work is held in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the National Museum of Wales; the Whitworth, Manchester; and the Women’s Art Collection, University of Cambridge.