Joe Turpin

Joe Turpin (b.1995 in Johannesburg) is a South African visual artist whose research practice focuses on historically charged narratives and semiotics as expansions of painting. Joe makes mixed-media installations grounded in painting that create temporal conversations about identity, memory, and history.

His Jewish heritage becomes principal and consequential in exploring stories of migration and persecution. These cultural paradigms inform his archival research and artistic production. Turpin graduated from the Pratt Institute in New York in 2023 with an MFA in Painting & Drawing, and from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 2018 with a BA in Fine Art.