Joy Labinjo | Girl on the sofa (2025)

Joy Labinjo | Girl on the sofa (2025)[[specs start]] Digital Pigment print with silkscreen glaze on Somerset Velvet 330gsm 59. 4 x 42cm Edition of 40, signed and numbered Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary [[specs end]] [[work start]] 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

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Digital Pigment print with silkscreen glaze on Somerset Velvet 330gsm

59.4 x 42cm

Edition of 40, signed and numbered

Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary

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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.

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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. 

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About the Errantry Fund

The Errantry Fund is a dedicated new philanthropic fund, developed by Whitechapel Gallery to support artists of colour, whose work has been overlooked or under-represented in the mainstream art world. 

 The Fund takes its name from the work of Édouard Glissant, the Martiniquan writer, poet and philosopher, who proposes ‘errantry’ or ‘disruption’ as a mode of freedom and resistance to fixed ideas of identity.

 As part of this initiative, we are delighted to present a series of special limited editions, the first generously donated by artists, Rana Begum and Joy Labinjo. By purchasing these works you are making a direct contribution to the Errantry Fund and helping us support artists that challenge and reconstitute dominant forms of representation.

With thanks to: Rana Begum and Joy Labinjo

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

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Whitechapel Gallery editions are generously donated by the artists. All proceeds from the sale of these works directly support our exhibition and education programmes. 

As is traditional in editions publishing, prices will rise as an edition starts to sell out. 

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The purchase of this edition is subject to resale restrictions. See Terms and Conditions at point of sale.