Kojo Marfo from Ghana: sold-out show for butcher turned painter

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Kojo Marfo is a butcher turned artist determined to bring the importance of cows to the world.

“The cow builds civilizations,” says Marfo. “In Ghana we use them to plow the land and if you have two or three animals you can marry a beautiful woman. In some parts of India they are treated like gods.”

His appreciation began as a child in rural Ghana, where he was raised by his mother and grandmother, and she grew up after moving to New York to work where he embarked on a short career as a butcher. .

“I was actually hopeless. I knew so little about meat that I cheated,” said the 41-year-old.

“On the wall there were anatomical drawings of the animals detailing each cut and I had to use that as a guide. Even then my boss would catch me and I was just chatting with customers.”

He may have sold their flesh before, but his bovine-inspired paintings are now selling for three times their asking price. Marfo’s work now adorns a range of designer scarves by Aspinal of London.

Other topics close to the artist’s heart are the power of femininity, the value of single parenthood, and the beauty of vitiligo.

At first glance, his work appears vividly African – he grew up in the mountainous town of Kwahu, about four hours from Accra – but each piece is a neat patchwork of different continents.

Renaissance frill necklaces from Great Britain, sacred cows from India and fertility dolls from Ghana are all present.

“We live in a big melting pot – it has a lot of cracks,” he says. “But I want to bring people together and for everyone to see their culture reflected.”

Marfo recalls spending his formative years in the local library looking at pictures of Picasso and watching Accra artisans sell their wares to tourists, but says his own artistic ambitions initially went no further than river bank.

“I thought I had to be a doctor or an accountant, but I would go by the river and pick up the hard clay or get some berries and grind them into dyes.

“I used to put petroleum jelly on paper to create tracing paper from art books or magazines. But it wasn’t until I left Ghana that my job got serious. “

Eventually he found his way from New York to the UK, where he worked in his aunt’s grocery store in London.

During the 2000s, Marfo admits that he gave up his art but was drawn in once inspiration returned.

“I wanted to show how positive a single parent lifestyle can be,” he says.

“In the mountains, women are the hardest working people there and lone women raised me. A staunch feminist once told me that men are always in charge, that women are always the victims. But women are still in charge where I come from. “

Her work also began to play with ideas of beauty – giving all of her character’s vitiligo all over their faces. The medical condition sees paler, unpigmented spots develop on a person’s skin.

“The faces, which look like a collage cut, I got these ideas from someone I know who had vitiligo,” Marfo said in a recent interview.

“When I tried it it worked for me. I always tell myself that I don’t want to paint beautiful art… I just want to paint something that I could use to talk about issues.”

Being raised by a Jehovah’s Witness mother also fueled her curiosity for religious symbolism.

“The African understanding of art is completely different from that of Europeans. Europeans can play with art and express themselves, but in Africa they look at it from a different perspective.

“If you paint a beautiful figure, a man or a woman or nature – that’s accepted. But the moment you dive into spirituality and voodoo, everyone is saying, ‘This guy is dangerous!’ Even good friends will say, ‘How can you refer to this stuff, you can’t play with this stuff?’

Marfo started selling pieces online, then sent his work to an open call for developing artists called Isolation Mastered.

Their dynamism and advantage caught the attention of judges, including Sotheby’s art historian David Bellingham and art collector Gavin Rossdale of the British rock band Bush, who purchased one of the paintings by Marfo for his personal collection.

Suddenly, all of Marfo’s work was selling.

“I don’t know if it was because of the Black Lives Matter background,” says Marfo.

“I hear two things from buyers: They see something different in my work: ‘nobody does what you do,’ they say – and they love the personal stories I attach to them.”

Such stories include Coronation, which features a couple staring straight ahead. You notice at second glance that the female figure is wearing a boxing glove clenched in a fist. This, Marfo says, is an ode to a woman he knows who found out her partner was having an affair during the lockdown.

In his first exhibition at the JD Malat Gallery in London, all of his works sold out within the first month. In his second exhibition, Dreaming of Identity, all of his works were collected at the end of the first day.

But Marfo, a mountain boy, doesn’t care about money. It’s about getting out of it.

“In Kwahu the land is not good for growing things, so you learn to make your own way. In Ghana, if you are from Kwahu, you are considered a money-grabber, but I have always been grateful for it was in my pocket. “

And he hasn’t entirely canceled swapping out his brush for the butcher’s knife, either.

“I am always fascinated by the work of butchers, I would like to learn the trade and do it correctly.”

Dreaming of Identity by Kojo Marfo is currently on display at the JD Malat Gallery in London

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