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Joy Labinjo is a British–Nigerian artist based in London, England. Born in 1994, she is known for her large colorful with flattened perspective that take inspiration from her collection of old family photos, found photos and historical archives. Her paintings usually explore themes of culture, identity, race and belonging through her depictions of Black individuals and families in everyday situations while also drawing from her experiences growing up as a British-Nigerian woman in the United Kingdom
Labinjo received her BFA degree at Newcastle University in 2017 and received the Woon Art Prize Woon Art Prize website . in the same year, which led to her being represented by Tiwani Contemporary. Tiwani Contemporary website. In 2020, she started her MFA at the University of Oxford and a residency at the Breeder Gallery in Athens, Greece.
In 2021, Labinjo was commissioned to create a piece for Art on the Underground. From November of the same year, Brixton Underground station displayed her piece 5 More Minutes.
Labinjo moved to Newcastle upon Tyne to continue her education at Newcastle University as one of the few students of color then studying within the fine arts program. In her third year of university, she studied in Vienna as she prepared to write her dissertation on young British artists. After undergoing some racist experiences and questioning the Eurocentrism art history education she received during her studies, Labinjo became interested in, and later changed her dissertation to focus on, artists of the British Black art movement of the 1980s. She researched artists such as Sonia Boyce, Claudette Johnson, Lubaina Himid, Keith Piper and Donald Rodney who inspired her to create art that dealt with her identity. Expanding on her thesis and motivated to create art centered around Black individuals, Labinjo took inspiration from old family photo albums she found at her home during her Christmas break. Through of these photographs, she created the compositions for her paintings that made up the collection she submitted to her degree show in 2017 and that led to her being awarded the Woon Art Prize in the same year. In 2017, she graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts.
Even though she became known for the work she created toward the end of her BFA and after it, Labinjo still planned on continuing her education. In October 2020, she started as a part time MFA student at the Ruskin School of Art within the University of Oxford.
Labinjo gained attention for her paintings depicting Black figures in day-to-day situations, inspired by old family photos. Her initial process of collage uses everything from old family photos to Instagram posts in order to create compositions and new environments for her paintings, known for their vivid colors, interesting patterns, flattened perspective, and bold brushstrokes.
In 2018, Labinjo presented her first solo exhibition, Recollections, at the Tiwani Contemporary gallery, of works inspired by family photos. Pieces such as The Elders, Visiting Great Grandma and Untitled (a portrait of a younger version of Labinjo and her aunt) were exhibited. Untitled sold for £69,300. In the same year, Labinjo started working in a studio in Brixton.
In October 2019, Tiwani Contemporary dedicated their booth at the Frieze Art Fair in London to Labinjo and her work. Labinjo received much attention at the fair due to three of her pieces being sold within the first couple of hours. In the same month, Joy Labinjo: Our histories cling to us, her first major solo institutional show, opened at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. With a title from the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, this included works with similar themes and subject matter to those of her previous works. The exhibition closed in February 2020. In November 2019, Labinjo presented her work for the first time in Nigeria at the international art fair ART X Lagos.
In October 2020 Labinjo started her MFA at the University of Oxford, and in December of that year Tiwani Contemporary presented another exhibition of her work for Art Basel Miami Beach OVR, the first time Labinjo presented work in the United States. The work focused on Black British historical figures, most notably a portrait of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the Yewa princess sold into slavery who later became Queen Victoria's goddaughter.
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