Highpower

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work deals with portraiture in its own unique way. The artist represents individuals or groups of individuals against blank backgrounds, without the viewer being able to determine their time or place. The people that Lynette Yiadom-Boakye depicts do not exist in real life; these are compositions that she assembles based on her imagination, recollections, and references. The poses, colours, and general style allude to works near and dear to the artist, including paintings by Manet, Degas, Goya, Velasquez, and others. By focusing exclusively on Black characters, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye explores their status in art history as well as the very notion of the portrait, which exists here in a state of tension between invention and realism.