Biography
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings focus on fictional figures that exist outside of specific times and places. In a 2010 interview with Nadine Rubin Nathan in the New York Times Magazine, Yiadom-Boakye described her compositions as ‘suggestions of people... They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether.’ This lack of fixed narrative leaves her work open to the projected imagination of the viewer.
Yiadom-Boakye has participated in several important solo exhibitions, at Tate Britain, London (2020); Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut (2019); Corvi-Mora, London (2019); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2017); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2016); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2015); Serpentine Gallery, London (2015); Yale School of Art, New Haven, USA (2014); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, USA (2013); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012); and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2011). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions including Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (2020); Venice Biennale (2019); Museum of the African Diaspora, California (2019); The Mennello Museum of American Art, Florida (2018); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2018); 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2018); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2016); Venice Biennale (2013); and Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France (2012).
Yiadom-Boakye received the Future Generation Art Prize and the Carnegie Prize in 2012 and 2018 respectively. She was shortlisted for the 2013 Turner Prize, and a monograph of her work was published by Prestel in 2014.
Her work can be found in numerous collections, such as Arts Council Collection, UK; Art Gallery of South Australia; Baltimore Museum of Art; Kunsthalle Mannheim; Leeds University Art Collection; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City; and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others.
She attended the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (1997), earned BA from Falmouth College of Arts (2000) and an MA from the Royal Academy Schools, London (2003).
Yiadom-Boakye was born in 1977 in London, where she currently lives and works.
SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 12
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