In 2025, the German-Ghanaian artist Jojo Gronostay (b. 1988) will be invited to draw inspiration from the collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) and work on his art at the museum for around six months as part of the Fund for young design programme initiated by the Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen (SHK). Gronostay will then present the results of his project in a show on view from 22 May to 3 August.
Jojo Gronostay works in the fields of fashion, photography and art, dealing with themes of identity, representation and neo-colonialism as well as recycling and value creation in the fashion industry. He examines in his work forms of structural racism, for example in relation to what is known as the “Shirley card”, a colour card used in the photography industry since the 1940s to match the colour values of photographic papers and films, using a pale complexion as the standard value.
Gronostay has been purchasing second-hand clothes at the Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana, since 2017. In his art project and fashion label DWMC (Dead white men's clothes), he upcycles these garments and puts them back on the European fashion market, thus calling into question global textile recycling processes, among other issues.
Gronostay also used second-hand goods from the Kantamanto Market in his photo series Brutalism (2021), in which he stages individually sold shoe heels as monumental objects reminiscent of brutalist buildings.
Jojo Gronostay (b. 1988 in Hamburg) studied art and photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at international museums and exhibition venues, including the Kunsthalle Wien; the Grassi – Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Leipzig; the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2021); the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City (2022); and the Circulation(s) European Young Photography Festival in Paris (2023). He has received honours including the Dorothea von Stetten Art Award (2024), the European Month of Photography Award (2023) and the Fashion Award of the City of Vienna (2021). Jojo Gronostay lives and works in Vienna.
The Fund for young design, founded in 2020 by the Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, gives young talents from creative disciplines such as product, fashion and graphic design as well as photography the opportunity to obtain an in-depth look at the MK&G collection. In the course of a six-month residency, they can discover objects that inspire them, seek the expert advice of the curators, and learn about new materials and techniques. The aim is for them to produce one or more works that will become the property of the Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen on permanent loan to the MK&G collection. The Fund for Young Design residency grants are awarded every six months and contribute to the financial and non material support of young designers. The acquisition of the works by the Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen enables MK&G to expand and augment its collection while promoting contemporary design.