Artists

Contemporary British painter and writer, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, was born in London to Ghanaian parents. She studied at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts, and the Royal Academy Schools. Her figurative and often poetic compositions of imaginary and predominantly Black figures are created from memory, which acts as a catalyst, and completed from different sources, including drawings, found images, and scrapbooks. Based on the formal elements of line, form, and colour, Yiadom-Boakye’s contemporary compositions focus on the language of painting. The artist believes that the power is in the act of painting, mark making, texturing, and layering. The titles of her paintings often bear no connection to the enigmatic images on her canvases as she considers them an extra mark on her canvas rather than an explanation of the painting itself.

Yiadom-Boakye was awarded the Carnegie Prize in 2018 and was the recipient of the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize in 2012. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2013. She has exhibited in numerous solo shows, including at the Yale Centre for British Art and at the 57^th Venice Biennale, and the survey of her paintings created between 2003 and the present, which is currently on display at Tate Britain. Yiadom-Boakye’s works are represented in numerous prestigious museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Collection in London.