About the work

Joy Labinjo has created a special artist's edition for Whitechapel Gallery in support of the Whitechapel Gallery Errantry Fund. 

For this edition, Joy Labinjo has revisited the nude as subject matter, as a continuation of her recent Terra Firma series;  a number of bold nude self-portraits exhibited at the Tiwani Contemporary gallery in Lagos, Nigeria. Labinjo’s Girl on the sofa, 2025 is part of a new body of work, featuring friends of the artist. The work focuses on the sitter in domestic settings, where they feel comfortable, adding to the intimacy of the portrait. Labinjo is interested in contemporary depictions of the black female body, often missing from discussions surrounding the nude.

About the artist

Joy Labinjo (b.1994, UK) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Labinjo’s large-scale figurative paintings often depict intimate scenes of historical and contemporary life, both real and imagined and often based on figures appearing in personal and archival imagery that include family photographs, found images and historical material. In the past, she has explored themes including but not limited to identity, political voice, 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. Exploring multiple modes of representation including abstraction, naturalism, flatness and graphic patterns, Labinjo’s ‘collage aesthetic’ comprises an eclectic visual vocabulary and mixed painterly techniques which echo her experience of multiple identities – growing up Black, British, Nigerian in the 90s and early 00s. 

About the Errantry Fund

The Errantry Fund is a dedicated and forward-thinking new philanthropy fund developed by Whitechapel Gallery to invest in artists of the Global South and the diaspora whose work has been neglected or under-represented in the mainstream art world.

The fund takes its name from Martiniquan writer, poet, and philosopher Édouard Glissant, who conceived 'errantry' as a strategic and philosophical mode of freedom–resisting fixed identities and embracing movement, multiplicity, and relation.

As part of this initiative, we are delighted to present a series of special limited editions, generously donated by artists Miranda Forrester, Virginia Chihota, Rana Begum and Joy Labinjo. By purchasing these works you are making a direct contribution to the Errantry Fund, directly enabling artists and perspectives that will effect change and ensure that their work is seen and experienced by the widest possible audiences.

With thanks to: Miranda Forrester, Virginia Chihota, Rana Begum and Joy Labinjo.

For further information on the Errantry Fund see here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/support-2/the-errantry-fund/