Thirty Six Inch in Six Thirteen
Anya Paintsil
About the SessionHair Matters: A Selection of Works from the Georgina Jaffee Collection is a tightly focused, thematic auction that initiates a critical dialogue on the profound significance of hair in contemporary artistic practice. Featuring a cohort of accomplished contemporary artists, primarily those working from the African continent or within the global African diaspora, this selection of works is guided by a singular conceptual mandate: every work turns to hair as a powerful nexus, serving as medium, metaphor, or focal point of exploration.
Hair Matters illuminates the diverse interpretations and artistic vocabularies through which hair shapes identity, memory, and meaning across cultures, nations, and histories. Featuring artists such as Léonce Raphaël Agbodjélou (Benin), Ifeoma U. Anyaeji (Nigeria), Sethembile Msezane (South Africa), and Hank Willis Thomas (United States), the auction examines the aesthetics, politics, and sociology of hair, with particular emphasis on African perspectives and the connective threads that link the continent and its global diasporas.
Curatorial Voices: Natasha Becker, Jared Leite, Vida Madighi-Oghu and Sihle Motsa.
About this Item
Provenance
Ed Cross Fine Art, London.
The Georgina Jaffee Hair Matters Collection.
Literature
Sammi Gale (2020) Plinth, Thread by Thread an Interview with Anya Paintsil, online, accessed 20 November 2025, illustrated.
Notes
Anya Paintsil weaves powerful personal narratives through hair, using it as a medium to explore her complex, hybrid identity. Of Welsh and Ghanaian descent, her practice is shaped by growing up in Wales as a mixed-race woman, navigating feelings of alienation and enduring racial abuse. Paintsil recalls that there was “always a kind of general unacceptance that you were Welsh,”1 an experience that continues to inform her work. Her art confronts Eurocentric beauty standards and engages broader discourses on race, belonging, and representation. As Paintsil explains, “I wanted to focus on beauty and what it feels like to be a black woman, a mixed-raced woman, living in a very white society… There are features that I was bullied for growing up,”2 underscoring how her practice fuses personal history with social critique.
The present lot depicts a floating, disembodied figure with a long synthetic blonde braid set against a blank beige background. The figure’s wide-set eyes and isolation evoke the alienation central to Paintsil’s lived experience, while the braid extending beyond the canvas heightens the tension between rejection and aspiration embedded in Eurocentric beauty ideals. The composition captures a liminal space in which exclusion and desire uneasily co-exist.
1. Funmi Fetto (2025) British Vogue, With Her Latest Exhibition, Anya Paintsil Weaves Hair - Both Real and Synthetic - Into Her Boldest Show Yet, online, accessed, 15 January 2026.
2. Ibid.
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