Born 1993 in Wrexham, North Wales, Anya Paintsil is a Welsh and Ghanaian artist working primarily with textiles. From rug hooking to embroidery, her assemblages evoke tactile tapestry on the one hand, and constitute semi-sculptural interventions on the other. Playful and profound, flippant and forceful, her practice engages the language of fibres — of all kinds — with interrogations of materiality and political personhood.
Anya Paintsil made her London debut at Somerset House’s annual contemporary African art fair, 1-54, 2020. Recent institutional acquisitions include the National Museum of Wales; Arts Council Collective, London; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Tullie House Museum, Carlisle; the Women's Art Collection, Cambridge; Arts Council Collection, London, and The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Private collections include Amoako Boafo and Mark Quinn. Anya was awarded the prestigious Wakelin Prize 2020 (exhibited at the Glynn Vivian in 2021), and featured in Crafts Council Gallery's exhibition 'Maker's Eye', London and Salon 94 in New York, both 2021; in 2022, Anya presented her first London solo show, We Are All Made of You with Ed Cross, and in 2023, she presented a solo exhibition Proof of Their Victories with Hannah Traore Gallery (New York).