Amoako Boafo

Amoako Boafo (b. 1984; Accra, Ghana; lives and works in Ghana) is innovative in his approach to the presentation of Black bodies, reframing and realigning their presence despite the wider global context surrounding Black culture. Acclaimed for his compelling finger-painted portraits, Boafo’s work has become a landmark within a distinct pictorial subset of art history.

Through striking, often monochrome and direct portraits, Boafo establishes an intimate closeness with his sitters. The figures meet the viewer’s gaze with unwavering firmness, their expressions resolute and assured. Typically isolated against single-colour backgrounds, they leave the viewer nowhere to look but at the subject, creating little possibility for misinterpretation. His tableaux vivants are accorded a heightened sense of recognition, both physically in scale and spiritually in their grandeur.

Boafo studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria, and in 2017 was awarded the Jury Prize of the Walter Koschatzky Art Prize. His work has been widely collected by private and public institutions, most recently the Wooyang Art Museum (South Korea); Denver Art Museum (Colorado, USA); Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); the Leopold Museum (Vienna, Austria); Tate Modern (London, UK); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (California, USA); and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA).

His work has been exhibited in institutions such as the Belvedere Museum (Vienna, Austria); Kunsthalle Vienna (Vienna, Austria); Seattle Art Museum (Washington, USA); Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, USA); and The Bass Museum (Miami, USA), among others.