Exhibition: Allanol Always
2025-07-11 - 2025-10-25
Tŷ Pawb will present Allanol Always this summer, a new solo show by Welsh-Ghanaian artist Anya Paintsil on view from July to November 2025.
Delving into the complex expectations placed on Black artists regarding beauty, heritage, and representation; Allanol Always challenges the problematic pressure to depict Black figures through the lens of European high art, and the marginalisation of African and Caribbean art histories.
Embracing Allanol Always as a space for artistic exploration and experimentation, the show represents a significant moment in Paintsil’s artistic journey and coincides with her permanent return to her hometown of Wrexham later this year. Developing an entirely new and experimental body of work, Paintsil will experiment with new materials and techniques, including innovative appliqué methods, textile assemblages using repurposed and waste fabrics, and a series of freestanding sculptures created in collaboration with her partner, weaver Steven William. These sculptural objects, inspired by Welsh mythology, lean towards abstraction, exploring themes of monstrous figuration and the grotesque.
Drawing from her childhood in North Wales, folklore and the Fante tradition of figurative textiles, Paintsil weaves together craft techniques from her youth – rug making, appliqué and hand embroidery – with those of afro hair styling methods to create bold, textural portraits. Referencing the enduring influence of traditional West African art in her work and the visual language rooted in the forms of the masks of Kongo peoples, Aku’aba dolls and Asafo Flags, Paintsil considers the stark disparities at play where white artists are celebrated for drawing from African art, labelled as ‘tribal’ or ‘primitive’ in a romanticised sense; whilst Black artists alluding to the very same traditions are at risk of misinterpretation as self-caricature or satire, which in turn reinforces harmful stereotypes.
Through Allanol Always, Paintsil looks to disrupt these restrictive narratives, advocating for a broader, more inclusive understanding of Black art outside of Eurocentric paradigms. The choice of the Welsh word ‘Allanol’, translating to “outside” or “external,” in the exhibition’s title speaks to the positioning of African art as “outsider art” within the dominant narratives of Western art history, an act of othering that Paintsil acknowledges and seeks to directly challenge in their work. The title also resonates with Paintsil’s artistic focus on the human body’s exterior and its significance in shaping individual and collective experiences from which she explores themes of identity, representation, and the complexities of the Black female experience.
For Paintsil, the implications of the title are deeply nuanced, as on a personal level “Allanol” echoes her own experience of otherness as an artist and a woman of colour, where even within her hometown she has at times felt an outsider navigating societal expectations and her own artistic vision.
Paintsil’s solo show explores creativity and creative license within Black figuration, inviting viewers to engage with the work on their own terms. Curated in collaboration with independent curator Lewis Dalton Gilbert, Allanol Always will be accompanied by a programme of community events at Tŷ Pawb.
About Anya Paintsil
Anya Paintsil is a Welsh and Ghanaian textile artist who lives and works in London and Glyn Ceiriog. Drawing inspiration from her childhood in North Wales, and her ancestral, Fante tradition of figurative textiles, Paintsil combines craft practices she was taught as a young child; rug making, appliqué and hand embroidery with afro hairstyling techniques to create large scale portraits. Paintsils’ figures explore the possibilities and politics of non-representative depictions of the Black figure.
Often mistaken as subversion of ‘primitivism’, Paintsil deliberately and consciously refuses to root her work in the European Fine Art Canon, Paintsil’s visual language finds its basis in traditional West African Crafts and Art – carvings, wood sculptures, masks – exchanging the hard materials for soft, in an interrogation of gendered labour, particularly the labour of working class women.
Anya made her debut at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London in 2020, and since then Anya has received sustained interest from private collectors and public institutions. Recent acquisitions include Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The National Museum of Wales, The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and The Women’s Art Collection at Cambridge University.
