No Pleasure from Machinery

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye paints portraits of fictional Black figures, without real-life models. Her works are part of the History of portraiture, a genre traditionally associated with elevating the social status of its subjects. Within this tradition, Black bodies have often been rendered invisible, and Yiadom-Boakye’s work helps to fill this representational gap.

In this work, a young man, shown from the waist up and turned three-quarters, looks at us with an impenetrable gaze. His posture and expression echo the classical codes of portraiture while breaking free from them: as is often the case in this genre, the work reveals a physical form while suggesting the complexity of the subject's inner life. Here, however, the character, purely invented by the artist, escapes the function of identification specific to portraiture. 

The title, No Pleasure from Machinery, reflects the characteristic ambiguity of the artist. Also a poet, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye describes her titles as brushstrokes: they are inseparable from the work, yet they provide neither explanation nor description. As in her practice more broadly, meaning is not stated outright; it emerges through the viewer’s experience.

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