Joy Labinjo is a British–Nigerian artist based in London, England. Born in 1994, she is known for her large colorful figure paintings with flattened perspective that take inspiration from her collection of old family photos, found photos and historical archives. Her paintings usually explore themes of culture, identity, race and belonging through her depictions of Black individuals and families in everyday situations while also drawing from her experiences growing up as a British-Nigerian woman in the U.K. Labinjo received her BFA at Newcastle University in 2017 and received the Woon Art Prize the same year which led to her being represented by Tiwani Contemporary]. In 2020, she started her MFA at the University of Oxford and a residency at the Breeder Gallery in Athens, Greece. In 2021, Labinjo was commissioned to create a piece for Art on the Underground. From November of the same year, Brixton Underground station displayed her piece 5 More Minutes. Joy Labinjo was born in 1994, in Dagenham, England to Nigerian parents; her father, a biochemist, and her mother, a teacher. She spent the earlier part of her childhood in her hometown and she and her family later moved to Stevenage ; both towns had ethnically diverse communities. In secondary school, she found her passion for art by learning different media and about artists of the past. She decided to pursue this passion as a career. Labinjo moved to Newcastle upon Tyne to continue her education at Newcastle University as one of the few students of color then studying within the fine arts program. In her third year of university, she studied in Vienna as she prepared to write her dissertation on young British artists. After undergoing some racist experiences and questioning the Eurocentric art history education she received during her studies, Labinjo became interested in, and later changed her dissertation to focus on, artists of the British Black art movement of the 1980s. She researched artists such as Sonia Boyce, Claudette Johnson, Lubaina Himid, Keith Piper and Donald Rodney who inspired her to create art that dealt with her identity. Expanding on her thesis and motivated to create art centered around Black individuals, Labinjo took inspiration from old family photo albums she found at her home during her Christmas break. Through collages of these photographs, she created the compositions for her paintings that made up the collection she submitted to her degree show in 2017 and that led to her being awarded the Woon Art Prize the same year. In 2017, she graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts. Even though she became known for the work she created toward the end of her BFA and after it, Labinjo still planned on continuing her education. In October 2020, she started as a part time MFA student at the Ruskin School of Art within the University of Oxford. Source: Wikipedia