Isabelle, a year of return

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By Joshua Donkor
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£4,000.00

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Dimensions (HxWxD):

75 × 50 × 3 cm

Materials:

Oil paint, image transfers and graphite on board.

Primary Medium:

Oil Painting

Medium
2022
Signed on Front
Ready to display
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This portrait of Isabelle began in 2022 when I was doing a residency at the Edge Gallery with the Holburne Museum. Isabelle kindly agreed to sit for me and share some of her stories about growing up in the UK with dual British and Nigerian heritage. We spoke about the complexities of forming a sense of identity as a biracial person along with her memories of visiting Nigeria for the first time, having grown up in the UK. This portrait shows Isabelle holding an orange in their hand in a pose taking inspiration from classical renaissance compositions. Fruit was often incorporated into the compositions of paintings as a means to portraying the transience of life. Within this composition the orange is designed to represent the connection between Isabelle’s British and Nigerian heritage and the cycle of memories which it evokes for her. During our conversation we spoke about the first and only time she was able to visit Nigeria with her family. Having grown up in the UK, this was an especially significant experience. When I asked if there was one memory that they often went back to, Isabelle told me about her first time picking and eating an orange from a tree. This memory in many way sums up the culture shock that Isabelle was experiencing. Whilst she had grown up with some exposure to Nigerian culture there was still so much to learn. This moment of picking an orange only to discover that they were actually green, encapsulated that sense of culture shock. Everything was vastly different from what Isabelle had grown up experiencing. Within the rest of the painting she is surrounded by painterly green foliage which contains multiple photo transfers showing images from Isabell’s time in Nigeria and their upbringing in the UK as both sides of her heritage cross over one another.

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