Joy Labinjo’s large-scale figurative paintings often depict intimate scenes of historical and contemporary life, both real and imagined. Figures appear from personal and archival imagery that include family photographs, found images and historical material. She explores themes including but not limited to identity, power, Blackness, race, history, community and family and their role in contemporary experience.

Her work presents fresh and arresting compositions of colour, pattern and motifs: key signatures of Labinjo’s work. Fundamentally, at the heart of Labinjo’s practice is a bold interest in storytelling and ultimately, people’s lives.

Labinjo has exhibited widely, recent exhibitions include Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge UK, When We See Us, Bozar, Brussels with her last solo exhibition We are Briefly Gorgeous taking place last year at Southwark Park Gallery, London.