Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

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Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Any Number of Preoccupations, organized by Associate Curator Naomi Beckwith, will be British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s very first solo museum exhibition. Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977, London) was recently included in the Studio Museum’s Flow (Spring 2008), an acclaimed exhibition of new work by emerging African artists from across the world. On view from November 11, 2010—March 13, 2011, Any Number of Preoccupations will feature works created between 2003—when the artist completed her postgraduate work at the Royal Academy Schools—and 2010. The twenty-four works on view are a mix of her larger and smaller canvases of fictional portraits, primarily oil-on-canvas. Similar to a novelist, Yiadom-Boakye creates characters that have lively back stories; yet she leaves it up to the viewer’s imagination to fill in the details of these fictional lives. She works quickly, embracing the physicality and technicality of painting, and often destroys unsuccessful work—a strategy she says helps her maintain “freshness and urgency.” Language is a strong influence on Yiadom-Boakye; in addition to painting she is a prolific writer of fiction, poetry and essays. The catalogue for the exhibition features essays by Beckwith and renowned critic and curator Okwui Enwezor, a short story by Yiadom-Boakye, and a foreword by Studio Museum Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden.

Below, hear Lynette Yiadom-Boakye speak about her painting practice, exclusive to studiomuseum.org!

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