Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in 1977 in London, UK. She lives and works in London. Yiadom-Boakye attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools. She took part in numerous group exhibitions including the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008), Secret Societies, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main, the 11th Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art (all 2011), and The Ungovernables, New Museum Triennial, New York (2012). In 2012 Lynette also had a solo exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, London. Painting black people for Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is something completely natural that has come to carry a political meaning. Her figures, always either fictional or anonymous, emerge during the act of painting which usually does not take her longer as a day for each picture. “It’s about a certain kind of urgency and capturing that time frame,” Yiadom-Boakye herself describes the process. Most of her paintings come in work groups, which is also relevant in terms of presentation. The changing combination of paintings suggests a narrative which remains undefined by the artist and can thus be fleshed out by the viewer’s interpretation.