Dr Kimathi Donkor

Biography

Kimathi Donkor is an artist whose work re-imagines mythic, historical and everyday encounters across Africa and its global Diasporas, principally in painting and drawing. Dramatic, monumental paintings portray pivotal, black, historical figures like Toussaint L'Ouverture, Cherry Groce, Harriet Tubman, Yaa Asantewa and Nanny of the Maroons, whilst more serene works depict anonymous everyday scenes of contemporary leisure, work and love.

His work has been exhibited at the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Sharjah Biennial, the Bienal de São Paulo, the Venice Biennale, the International Slavery Museum, Gallery MOMO in Johannesburg, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the ICA, Kettle's Yard, The Wright, Gallery 1957, the MAC, New Art Exchange and many more.

Donkor is a Reader in Black Art and Contemporary Painting at the University of the Arts, London where he has also served as the Course Leader in BA Fine Art: Painting and the Interim Programme Director of Painting at Camberwell College of Arts, among other roles. From 2016-2018, he was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow with the TrAIN research centre at Chelsea College of Arts, during which he wrote 'Africana Andromeda: Contemporary Painting and the Classical Black Figure’, published by the Oxford University Press in the 2020 anthology 'Classicisms in the Black Atlantic'.

Art by Kimathi Donkor is held in collections around the world including at The British Museum, The Wolverhampton Art Gallery, the International Slavery Museum, the Sharjah Art Foundation, the collection of CCH Pounder and the Sindika Dokolo Foundation, amongst many others. He is represented by Niru Ratnam Gallery in London.