After experiencing a downturn in 2020 due to the pandemic situation, the art world will start to breathe again in 2021! Several exhibitions have been waiting for you in 2021. One of them is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition at Tate Britain that will set to run until 9 May 2021. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a British painter and writer, who is well-known for her portraits of imaginary subjects.
Yiadom-Boakye creates portrait painting that is not based on the real sitter, but on her own imagination. Sometimes she paints subjects from the found images. The figure of Yiadom-Boakye‘s painting is, what is called, an uncanny. The uncanny lies between imaginary and reality, between familiar and strange, between superstitions and facts. The uncanny in her paintings sometimes makes the beholder forget whether it is real or imaginative.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, A Passion Like No Other (2012). Collection Lonti Ebers. ©Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. https://www.tate.org.uk
She often portrays Black figures. Her artworks are triggering questions about identity and representation issues. The deep colors in her painting bring the viewer to the endless enigma, like in “A Passion Like No Other”. At the same time, Yiadom-Boakye challenges the stereotyping of the Black people through her figures who are creative, passionate, and emphatic. Try to see “Condor and the Mole” or “Complication 2013”!
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Condor and the Mole, 2011. Arts Council Collection (London, UK) ©Lynette Yiadom-Boakye https://www.tate.org.uk
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Complication 2013, pinault collection, ©Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. https://www.tate.org.uk
In the exhibition entitled Fly In League With The Night, around 80 works of Yiadom-Boakye will be displayed, including her works from 2003. This exhibition is a collaboration between Tate Britain with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean.
