Anya Paintsil – The delight of walking alone

Anya Paintsil – The delight of walking alone
Glasgow International 2026
Burns Street Studios, Glasgow
5th – 21st June 2026

The Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions presents The delight of walking alone, a solo exhibition by Welsh and Ghanaian artist Anya Paintsil, as part of the Open Programme for Glasgow International 2026.

Based in Glyn Ceiriog and London, Paintsil draws 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, including rug making, appliqué, and hand embroidery, with afro hairstyling techniques to create large scale portraits.

Inspired by North Welsh folklore, since her own return to a small village in North Wales, this new work imagines giantesses, who delight in their freedom in the landscape, swamps and hills. The name of Paintsil’s own village, Dôlywern, translates as ‘the meadow of the swamp’. The power and strength of these joyful Black giantesses, subverts societal norms and archaic tropes of feminine ideals, questioning the absurdity of one body type that every woman must aspire to.

The women are made from materials with their own provenance, ranging from items left on her doorstep by the artist’s neighbours and fellow villagers, to re-purposed yarns, braids made from both synthetic and human hair, the leather from old handbags and re-cycled crochet made into flowers. Paintsil has dyed fabrics and also painted on other materials, to rework into these artworks.

Whilst Paintsil’s work does not specifically portray landscape her work is very much made from place. The act of making returns Paintsil to her childhood imagination where she had the freedom to roam and be happy in solitude in nature, rather than at a removal from the natural world.

Paintsil’s figures explore the possibilities and politics of non-representative depictions of the Black figure, drawing from African art history, identity, personal narratives, and humour. Often mistaken as a subversion of ‘primitivism’, Paintsil deliberately refuses to root her work in the European Fine Art Canon. Instead, her 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 Paintsil has recently exhibited at Ames Yavuz, London (2026) and Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham (2025). Her work is in collections including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The National Museum of Wales, The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and The Women’s Art Collection at Cambridge University.

This exhibition is curated by GSA Exhibitions Director Jenny Brownrigg. Supported by The Glasgow School of Art; with additional support from Glasgow International with funds from the Scottish Government’s Festival EXPO Fund.

Image: BUTTERFLY BUDDLEIA, Anya Paintsil (2025). Found fabric, found denim, synthetic hair, heavy canvas, acrylic, leather, diamantés and wool on polycotton, 80 x 65cm. Courtesy of Anya Paintsil and Ames Yavuz. Photo: Justin Piperger