Jojo Gronostay

Germany, b. 1988 

Living and working in Vienna, Jojo Gronostay’s artistic practices interrogate the relationship between the formerly colonized countries of Africa and the so-called Western world. Questioning the systems of economic, political, and cultural exchanges, he examines the logic and mechanisms that underscore these interplays. A German artist with Ghanaian roots, Gronostay is the founder of the brand Dead White Men’s Clothes (DWMC)—both an art project and a fashion label. When the first waves of second-hand clothes arrived from the Global North to Ghana in the 1970s as help aid, they were of such high quality the locals assumed the previous owner must have died. Since 2017, Jojo Gronostay reversed the process, buying used clothing from Kantamanto Market in Accra–the world’s largest marketplace for second-hand textiles–only to re-introduce them to Western industries. Gronostay studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is represented by Gallery Hubert Winter.