Ben Uri: Audio Adventures

Pitika Ntuli was born in Mpumalanga, South Africa in 1942 and, as a teenage member of the Pan Africanist Congress, was at the frontline of apartheid resistance. Arriving in his 30s as an exile in England in 1978, after studying in the USA and imprisonment in Swaziland, he received qualifications at Middlesex Polytechnic and Brunel University in 1984 and 1985, respectively. Until his return to Sout...

Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings was born in Khartoum, Sudan in 1969. Having lost her hearing due to meningitis, her family relocated to England in 1981, as there were no schools for the deaf in Khartoum. She earned a BA in Textile Design at the Surrey Institute for Art and Design (SIAD) and in 2003 she founded Resonant Arts, an arts-led initiative focused on deaf women, facilitating integration and the exc...

Louis Maqhubela was born to Xhosa parents in South Africa in 1939. During 1957‒59, while still attending high school, he started studying part-time under artists Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Komalo at the Polly Street Centre in Johannesburg. After spending time with the South African expatriate artist, Douglas Portway, in Cornwall, England, Maqhubela embraced a new direction towards modernist abstract...

Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede was born in Ayegbaju Ekiti, in the Yoruba-speaking region of Nigeria, on 9 June 1943. After early art training in his homeland, in 1963 he moved to England to study painting and decoration at Willesden College of Technology, London (1963–66), before training in sculpture and bronze-casting at Hammersmith School of Art, London (1966–70). Jegede was an active member of the Cari...

Gavin Jantjes was born in District Six in Cape Town, South Africa in 1948. He attended Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town between 1966 and 1969, after which he received a scholarship to study at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, Germany between 1970 and 1972. Producing controversial artworks criticising the apartheid regime in South Africa, Jantjes was exiled to...

Fathi Hassan was born into a Nubian-Egyptian family in Cairo, Egypt on 10 May 1957, after his family were displaced with the creation of Lake Nasser in 1952. He was educated in Egypt and in Italy (via a scholarship) and initially used his art to work as a commercial illustrator in Cairo. Hassan subsequently lived in Italy and Iraq before settling in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2018, already an establis...

Siddig el Nigoumi was born in Sudan in 1931. He attended the School of Art in Khartoum, where he specialised in pottery and sculpture. In 1957, he moved to England to study at the Central School of Art. He is known for his use of traditional African techniques and his handbuilt pots in burnished red earthenware with incised decoration, often with calligraphic inscriptions. Listen to his story here...

Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy was born in Awka, Nigeria on 2 May 1952 and was displaced as a refugee in the Biafran War before finally settling in the family home in Umubele, Nigeria. In 1975, Chukwuogo-Roy moved to England to pursue her art studies, attending East Ham College before earning a BA in Graphic Design from Hornsey College of Art (now Middlesex Polytechnic) in 1978. Becoming a painter in 1988,...

Gabriel Choto was born in 1995 in Harare, Zimbabwe, moving to England when he was five years old, eventually pursuing art studies at Leeds College of Art (2012), and in London at Camberwell College of Arts (UAL, 2014) and Central St Martins (UAL, 2019). Choto's practice explores themes of identity, diaspora, and familial connections. His works, frequently based on family photographs, blend pri...

Frank Bowling, OBE, RA, was born in 1934 in Bartica, British Guiana (now Guyana), and immigrated to England at the age of 19, settling in London. He began his career as a figurative painter, but following his encounters with American Expressionist painting in New York in the 1960s, his work moved towards abstraction. In 2005, Bowling was the first Black British artist to be elected a Royal Academi...

Annan Affotey

Atta Kwami was born in Accra, Ghana in 1956, studying painting at the University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and later earning a PhD in art history from the Open University, Milton Keynes, England in 2007. Kwami is best known for his abstract artworks rooted in the vibrant urban landscape of Kumasi, with the patterns in his paintings informed by the creations of local street artists seen on...

Emefa Cole was born to a Ga mother and an Ewe and Ga-Dangbe father in Sunyani, West-Central Ghana in 1979, and immigrated to London with her family aged 12. Having studied jewellery making in London, she has now established a successful and progressive brand in the UK, dedicated to experimental yet wearable art. In 2022 she was appointed the V&A's first curator of diaspora jewellery. Liste...

Godfried Donkor was born in Kumasi, Ghana in 1964, moving to London, England in 1973. He completed a a BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins (1984–89) and subsequently attended postgraduate courses in  Spain, before completing an MA in African Art History at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London (1995). Donkor is best known for his collages exploring the socio-histo...

James Barnor was born in Accra, Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1929. He established Ever Young, his first studio, in 1953, producing iconic portraits that captured a nation striving for modernity and independence. He moved to England in 1959 to study colour photography at the Colour Processing Laboratories (CPL) in Edenbridge in Kent and then enrolled at Medway College of Art in Rochester. Barnor is no...

John Akomfrah OBE, CBE was born in Accra, Ghana in 1957 and immigrated to the UK with his family in 1966, following the Ghanaian coup by the National Liberation Council (NLC). He studied sociology at Portsmouth Polytechnic, graduating in 1982; in the same year he co-founded the Black Audio Film Collective, followed by Smoking Dogs Films in 1998. His work investigates memory, post-colonialism, temp...

Kojo Marfo was born in Kwahu Tafo, Ghana, in 1980. He immigrated to London in the early 2000s to pursue higher education in the arts but did not complete his formal studies. He is a largely self-taught artist who is now established as a painter exploring themes of spirituality, injustice and womanhood, mixing Akan and Western styles. Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU:...

Larry Amponsah was born in 1989 in Accra, Ghana, earned his BFA in painting from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in 2015, an MFA in Chinese traditional painting and calligraphy from Jiangsu University in 2016, and an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art, London in 2018. Inspired initially by Ghanian calendars, which are usually layered one upon the other, Amponsah works...

Oku Ampofo was born in Mampong, Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1908. In 1932 he became the first Ghanaian to win the Gold Coast Government Medical Scholarship. Ampofo subsequently moved to Edinburgh, Scotland in 1933 and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, while taking night classes in sculpture at Edinburgh School of Art. Returning to Ghana in 1940 he founded the Akuapem Six, a group of a...

Eric Estorick was born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York City in 1913, studying sociology at New York University. After his marriage to textile designer Salome Dessau, the couple settled in London in 1947, where Estorick built one of the world's greatest collections of early 20th-century Italian art. Shortly before his death, he founded the Eric and Salome Estorick Foundation to house...

Eugénie Shinkle was born in Montréal, Canada in 1963. After initial studies in Engineering, she immigrated to London, England in 1997 to undertake her PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art. She has subsequently established herself as a photographer and academic. Listen to her story here or read the full biography on the BURU: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/eugenie-shinkle

Lubna Chowdhary was born to Pakistani parents in Tanzania in 1964. Her family moved to England in 1970, after which she trained at Manchester Metropolitan University and London's Royal College of Art. Her colourful ceramics address themes of urbanisation, belonging and material culture, and have been exhibited widely. Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU: https://www...

Lubaina Himid was born in Zanzibar (modern-day Tanzania) in 1954; following the death of her father, she immigrated to the UK at the age of four months with her mother, a textile designer. She studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon College of Art, followed by an MA in Cultural History from the Royal College of Art, London, and curated the seminal exhibition, 'The Thin Black Line', at the ICA...

Farwa Moledina was born in 1993 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and moved to England in 2010 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She studied Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art (c.2015–18) and is currently based in Birmingham. She creates work which addresses multiculturalism, the white male gaze, voyeurism and representations of Muslim women in both art history and contemporary culture. Listen to his s...

David Adjaye was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1966 and moved to Britain with his family in 1975. After graduating from London South Bank University and the Royal College of Art in London, he quickly established his own practice, Adaye Associates, designing many notable public buildings around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, USA and the Nobel Peace Centre in Osl...