Painting Infinitude
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye speaks with Rizvana Bradley about her painterly practice, which, as Bradley has written in an issue of the art journal, Parkett, “moves through the speculative poses of lovers and friends, lone travelers and solitary thinkers, and bohemian circles.” Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work “signifies the links between subjectivity, temporality, and finitude, of implied encounters with the self at different moments in time, potentially split across geographical spaces, territories, and histories. The work points to the way consciousness is shaped at the nexus of these disjunctions, which have enriched the cultural imaginaries that constitute a quintessentially diasporic experience.”

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in 1977 in London where she is currently based. She attended Falmouth School of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools (MA). Yiadom-Boakye has had several solo museum shows, most recently at: New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2017; Kunsthalle Basel, 2016; Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2015; and The Serpentine Gallery, London, 2015. She was included in the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art , 2015 and in The British Art Show 8 travelling to four venues between 2015 and 2017. Other recent group exhibitions include: Sharjah Biennial 12, 2015; 55th Venice Biennale, 2013; New Museum Triennial, 2012; and 11th Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, 2012. Her work is included in many institutional collections including: Tate Collection, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Miami Art Museum; Studio Museum in Harlem; Arts Council Collection, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Yiadom-Boakye was the 2012 recipient of the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize, which was accompanied by a solo exhibition of her work. She was short-listed for the 2013 Turner Prize and in 2016 she was awarded the South Bank Sky Arts Award.