Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) is a British painter and writer of Ghanaian heritage. She is best known for her portraits of imaginary subjects, or ones derived from found objects, which are painted in muted colours. Her work has contributed to the renaissance in painting the Black figure. Her paintings often are presented in solo exhibitions.

Early life and career

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in London, UK where she currently lives and works. Her parents worked as nurses for the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

after emigrating from Ghana in the 1960s. Yiadom-Boakye describes herself as "a boring child--good grades, no mischief--but also quite good at living in my head, using my imagination as an escape." As a senior in high school, she took an art foundations course as an experiment and afterwards gave up her previous intentions to become an optician to become an artist Yiadom-Boakye attended Central St. Martins College of Art and Design (1996-7); however, she did not enjoy her time there, so she transferred to Falmouth College of Art (1997-2000) where she eventually was awarded her undergraduate degree in 2000. She then completed an MA degree at the

Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

in 2003. It was there, in her final year of graduate school, that she came to a realization that changed the direction of her work, leading to her fame. In an interview with Dodie Kazanjian of ''Vogue'' she stated “Instead of trying to put complicated narratives into my work, I decided to simplify, and focus on just the figure and how it was painted. That in itself would carry the narrative." Following college she worked jobs to support herself until 2006 when she received Arts Foundation Fellowship for painting and was able to afford to focus solely on painting. In 2010 her work was recognized by

Okwui Enwezor Okwui Enwezor (23 October 1963 – 15 March 2019) was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history. Enwezor served as artistic director of several major exhibitions, including Documenta11 (2002) and th ...

. With curator Naomi Beckwith,

catalogued her exhibition at

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an African-American art museum at 144 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African A ...

. She was among those nominated for the

Turner prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award). ...

in 2013. In addition to her artwork, Yiadom-Boakye has taught at the Ruskin School of Art,

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

where she is a visiting tutor for their Master in Fine Arts programme. Her influence as a painter was recognized in the 2019

Powerlist The Powerlist is a list of the 100 most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom. The list is updated annually and has been published in book format by Powerful Media since 2007. The Powerlist is not lim ...

and she was subsequently listed among the "top 10" of the most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the UK in 2020.

Work

Artworks

Yiadom-Boakye's work consists mostly of painted portraits of imaginary Black subjects. Her paintings are predominantly figurative, with raw and muted colors. The characteristic dark palette of her work is known for creating a feeling of stillness that contributes to the timeless nature of her subjects. Her portraits of imaginary individuals feature people reading, lounging, and resting in traditional poses. She brings to the depiction of her subjects contemplative facial expressions and relaxed gestures, making their posture and mood relatable to many viewers. Commentators have attributed some of the acclaim of Yiadom-Boakye's work to this relatability. She strives to keep her subjects from being associated with a particular decade or time; many of her art pieces depict figures/people of African descent. This results in choices such as not painting shoes on her subjects, as footwear often serves as a time stamp. These figures usually rest in front of ambiguous backgrounds, floating inside monochromatic dark hues. These cryptic, but emotional backdrops remind commentators of old masters such as Velasquez and Degas. The artist's style shifted slightly after the opening of her 2017 show "In Lieu of a Louder Love". The show featured a new, warmer colour scheme. Her subjects in this show included more vibrant details such as a checkered linoleum-floor, a bold headwrap and bathing suit, and a yellow, orange, and green background. Although each portrait only contains one person, the paintings typically are presented in groups that are arranged as if family portraits. With her expressive representations of the human figure, Yiadom-Boakye examines the formal mechanisms of the medium of painting and reveals political and psychological dimensions in her works, which focus on imaginary characters who exist beyond our world in a different time and in an unknown location. She paints figures who are intentionally removed from time and place, and has stated, "People ask me, ‘Who are they, where are they?’ What they should be asking is ‘what' are they?" Yiadom-Boakye takes inspiration for her paintings from the found objects she uses as well as personal memories, literature, and art history of painting. She also finds inspiration from music and artists including:

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music, 20th-century music. Davis ado ...

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the Jazz#Post-war jazz, history of jazz and 20th-century musi ...

Bill Evans William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist and composer who worked primarily as the leader of his trio. His use of impressionist harmony, block chords, innovative chord voicings, a ...

Nick Drake Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician. An accomplished acoustic guitarist, Drake signed to Island Records at the age of twenty while still a student at the University of Cambridg ...

, Lisa Yuskavage, Chris Offili, and

Isaac Julien Sir Isaac Julien (born 21 February 1960Annette Kuhn"Julien, Isaac (1960–)" BFI Screen Online.) is a British installation artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Early life Juli ...

. The

Tate Museum Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

provides an introduction to her work that is extensive, to accompany a major exhibition of her work held from 2 December 2020 to 9 May 2021.''An Introduction to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye From her imagined figures to her poetic titles, discover this figurative painter’s work''

, accessed December 5, 2020

Writing

For an artist, Yiadom-Boakye is unusual in describing herself as a writer as much as a painter—her short stories and prosy poems frequently appear in her catalogues. Examples of her works shown in catalogues includes five extracts from a detective novel entitled "''an Officer of the Law''" and some intermittent notes on criminality. Her story "an Officer of the Law" is a fictional short story that utilizes animals for the characters. Yiadom-Boakye also creates poetry as shown in her intermittent note "Something Close to a Confession." An example of this:

"Dead but for the life in me, Where Black rivers run in the Bath, Having eaten the Activist and her Cause And alerted the Ugly to all their Flaws I Bask where God cannot see me. On Vacant lot, my eyes make water And draw the blinds against a Slaughter."

In talks about her work, the artist notes that her writing is to her as her painting is, and explains that she "writes the things she doesn't paint and paints all the things she doesn't write". Her paintings are given poetic titles.

Art market

At a 2019 auction at Phillips in London, Yiadom-Boakye's ''Leave A Brick Under The Maple'' (2015), a life-size portrait of a standing man, sold for about $1 million. At the 2022

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

20th/21st Century Frieze Week season auction, Yiadom-Boakye's ''Highpower'' was estimated at £600,000 and sold for £1,482,000

Subject for work of others

Painted in 2017, Kehinde Wiley's ''Portrait of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite'' is displayed in the

Yale Center for British Art The Yale Center for British Art at Yale University in central New Haven, Connecticut, houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. The collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, rare ...

New Haven, CT New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is List ...

. A portrait of Yiadom-Boakye by photographer Sal Idriss is held in the collection of the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. When it opened in 1856, it was arguably the first national public gallery in the world th ...

. ''Poem After an Iteration of a Painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Destroyed by the Artist Herself'' by Ama Codje was published by the Massachusetts's Review on December 26, 2019

Exhibitions

Yiadom-Boakye has staged numerous solo exhibitions at museums and galleries internationally. Her notable solo shows include ''Any Number of Preoccupations'' (2010),

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

; ''Verses After Dusk'' (2015),

Serpentine Galleries The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Westminster, Greater London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Galler ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

; ''A Passion To A Principle'' (2016),

Kunsthalle Basel Kunsthalle Basel is a contemporary art gallery in Basel, Switzerland. As Switzerland's oldest and still most active institution for contemporary art established in the year of 1872, Kunsthalle Basel forms a vital part of Basel's cultural centre ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

; ''Under-Song For a Cipher'' (2017),

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-nam ...

, New York; and ''Fly In League With The Night'' (2022-2023),

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

, London. She has also participated in a number of group shows and exhibitions, including the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); the Sharjah Biennial (2015); 58th Venice Biennale (2019), and '' Afro-Atlantic Histories'' (2021-2022). Yiadom-Boakye's work is included in several museum collections in the United States including the

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art is an art museum in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The museum was originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was formerly located ...

, and the

Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...

collection, and the picture ''King for an Hour'' was on view at the institution's long-term display for 2023.

Awards

Yiadom-Boakye has been widely hailed for her work, winning accolades including The Arts Foundation fellowship for painting (2006), the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize (2012), Next Generation Prize from the

New Museum of Contemporary Art The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-name ...

(2013), South Bank Sky Arts Award for Visual Art (2016) and the

Carnegie Prize The Carnegie Prize is an international art prize awarded by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It currently consists of a $10,000 cash prize accompanied by a gold medal. History The Carnegie Prize was established in 1896, t ...

at 57th edition of

Carnegie International The Carnegie International is a North American exhibition of contemporary art from around the globe. It was first organized at the behest of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie on November 5, 1896, in Pittsburgh. Carnegie established ...

(2018). She was also nominated for the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award). ...

(2013).

Notable works in public collections

*''Nous étions'' (2007),

*''The Fondness'' (2010),

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art gallery, art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of A ...

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City, Missouri, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by List of cities in Missouri, population and area. The city lies within Jackson County, Missouri, Jackson, Clay County, Missouri, Clay, and Pl ...

*''Tambourine'' (2010), Nasher Museum of Art,

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*''Skylark'' (2010),

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York *''King for an Hour'' (2011),

*''Bracken or Moss'' (2012),

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art art gallery, museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side, Chicago, Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is on ...

*''10pm Saturday'' (2012),

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

*''Siskin'' (2012),

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

, London *''A Few For the Many'' (2013),

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

*''Appreciation of the Inches'' (2013),

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

*''Observer of Spring'' (2013) Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw *''Trapsprung'' (2013),

Seattle Art Museum The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. The museum operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in ...

*''Womanology 12'' (2014),

National Museum of African Art The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the Washington, D.C., United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African ar ...

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

*''A Culmination'' (2016),

Kunstmuseum Basel The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the oldest public art collection in the world and is generally considered to be the most important museum of art in Switzerland. It is listed as a Swiss heritage site of national significance. Its lineage extends ba ...

*''8am Cadiz'' (2017),

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, ...

*''Medicine at Playtime'' (2017),

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...

*''The Much-Vaunted Air'' (2017),

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple name chang ...

*''No Need of Speech'' (2018),

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

*''Repose 3'' (2018),

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the A ...

*''Shelves for Dynamite'' (2018),

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the List of largest art museums, largest ar ...