著名英国艺术家、电影人，作品多围绕回忆、后殖民主义、时间性和美学等话题，探索欧美的非洲裔移民的生命体验。1982年，他与艺术家David Lawson和Lina Gopaul在伦敦共同创立了影响深远的“黑色音频电影团体” (Black Audio Film Collective)，几位艺术家的合作延续至今。他们的首部电影作品《汉兹沃思之歌》(1986) 聚焦1985年在伯明翰和伦敦爆发的暴乱，影片中呈现大量的档案影像、照片和新闻片段。这部影片荣获了诸多国际大奖，并奠定了亚康法独具个人特点的多层次视觉风格。其他作品包括三屏装置《未完成的对话》(2012)，为理论家斯图尔特·霍尔生活工作的动人写照；《转折》(2012)，以德国艺术家阿尔布雷特·丢勒16世纪创作的两幅肖像作品为灵感源泉，对其中人物的生活展开想象；《谟涅摩绪涅》(2010) 揭露英国移民的经历，以经济困难与各种问题质疑英国所谓的应许之地。
约翰·亚康法出生于1957年，目前在伦敦生活、工作。他在世界各地广泛地举办过个展。
John Akomfrah is a hugely respected artist and filmmaker, whose works are characterised by their investigations into memory, postcolonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, who he still collaborates with today. Their first film, Handsworth Songs (1986) explored the events surrounding the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London through a charged combination of archive footage, still photos and newsreel. The film won several international prizes and established a multi-layered visual style that has become a recognisable motif of Akomfrah’s practice. Other works include the three-screen installation The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work; Peripeteia (2012), an imagined drama visualising the lives of individuals included in two 16th century portraits by Albrecht Dürer and Mnemosyne (2010) which exposes the experience of migrants in the UK, questioning the notion of Britain as a promised land by revealing the realities of economic hardship and casual racism.
Akomfrah (born 1957) lives and works in London. He has had numerous solo exhibitions.
