Artist Anya Paintsil's multicultural background gave new meaning to traditional craft techniques.
), Paintsil has been enjoying the mainstream appreciation of fiber art. “It’s much more easy for me to find materials,” she admitted. Paintsil is using a host of instruments and intricate techniques—a vintage Danish craft needle called a Danella, a latch hook, rug hooking, embroidery, all done by hand without ever employing modern electric versions—that she so adores. “There’s a lot of nuance in the tools that really excite me but are kind of invisible to other people.
Anything associated with women, Black women, is just not looked on as being high up or an art form. It was really important to me to work with things that are undervalued, that I already knew how to do. So as soon as I was in art school, I was making work like this. And I didn’t really paint. I didn’t do anything else.
For me, it’s the innocuousness a lot. I’m from an ethnic background where most people presume people to be white. So being Welsh, I title a lot of my works in Welsh. Even just in the subtlety of the title, people can tell a Welsh person made that, and then it’s like, Oh, it’s a Black person. The work being textile can engage people in a way they might not be thinking they’re going to be engaged, because it’s something you’re familiar with—like, it’s your coat.
Because I’ve lived in England and I lived in Scotland, I’ve lived outside Wales for nearly 10 years now—I’ve started to miss home. In the same way that I felt disconnected from Ghana, I started to feel disconnected from Wales. And I always feel like growing up in Wales, I didn’t like it because of racism mainly and the way that I felt I was treated, the way that I was never made to feel at home. So I just really wanted to turn my back on it in some ways, but then especially through my work.
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