Light of The Lit Wick

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints portraits of fictional Black figures, without real models. Her works are part of the history of human portraiture, a noble genre par excellence, which has long served to highlight the social status of its subjects. In this tradition, Black bodies have been largely invisible, and Yiadom-Boakye's work thus helps to fill this gap in representation.

In Light of the Lit Wick (2017), a dancer dressed in a white leotard stands out against a dark green background, frozen in the middle of an arabesque. Her concentrated expression and the energy with which she leaps, the tension in her muscles, are conveyed through fluid brushstrokes and oil paint, which the artist favors for its “fleshy and unpredictable” quality. The title invites us to perceive the dancer as a flame vibrating with its own brilliance in this unreal setting.

This work is part of the Pinault Collection and was first presented at the "Corps et âmes" exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce in 2025