In recent years, African art has become very popular in galleries and museums, and throughout the world art market. For his solo debut at the museum, Amoako Boafo wanted to question the space that African artists could and should occupy, so he created site-specific work that answers questions that arise about the continent’s art.
‘Deep Pink Sofa’ shows a cross-legged individual with a calm and confident look looking into what can be said to be a camera. Once Boafo’s exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Houston (CAMH), where he is currently on view, closes, the artwork will be dismantled and never to be exhibited again. Created for the moment, it has a lasting message.
“I think a lot of people talk about tables and chairs and sofas and I think everyone has the same idea of sitting down and relaxing, joining the table,” says Boafo. ok africa. “Whatever happens with contemporary African art, most people think that it is just a wave and that it will just fade away. But I think that doing that painting, for me, makes me feel that I have arrived”.
He continues: “Yeah, I’ll speak for myself first, but I also think we’ve been here a long time. But now, we have a couch where we’re comfortable. We’re all around and we’re not going anywhere.” .”
The piece is one of 30 paintings created by Boafo between 2016 and 2022, featured in his exhibition at the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s an expansion of the show that opened at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora earlier this year.
The title of Amoako Boafo’s exhibition is a version by pan-African civil rights activist WEB Du Bois, ‘The Souls of Black People’.
Photo: CAMH
Entitled ‘Soul of Black Folks’, the show is curated by a cultural critic Larry Ossei-Mensah. The selected works highlight issues of concern that Boafo is interested in, including the constant resistance against systemic oppression, the active fight against anti-black rhetoric, the commodification of black bodies in the media, and COVID-19.
The title of the exhibition is a take on pan-African civil rights activist WEB Du Bois’s ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, the seminal book containing several essays on race and examining how blacks see themselves and how the world sees them. world. Boafo account ok africaOssei-Mensah “wanted to connect what [Du Bois] I did as a scholar and what I am doing now as a visual artist.” Notably, the American sociologist, socialist and historian is buried in Osu, a neighborhood of the Ghanaian capital, where Boafo was born and raised.
The current exhibition adds to the growing list of milestones in the career of arguably one of the most sought after artists internationally.
Amoako Boafo says that the exhibition shows that the depth, consistency and maturity, as well as the color palette of her work, have grown.
Photo: CAMH
The Accra-born, Vienna-based artist, who left a career in tennis to pursue art professionally, is known for his vibrant use of color and improvisational gestures, focusing on the complexities of black life globally, black joy and black gaze. . His portraits of the black diaspora, consisting of raised, pointed figures, often isolated against solid-color backgrounds, have made him a favorite in the art world. The characteristic style of his finger dipped in paint, from friends, family and celebrities, creates these works.
In 2020, he made history as the first African artist to collaborate with French luxury house Dior on its Spring/Summer 2021 men’s collection. Three of his paintings were also launched into space aboard Jeff Bezos’ rocket in 2021. Adding a solo museum show to his resume only solidifies his place in the art world and further fan the flame of what’s yet to come. . “To have that is an amazing thing and to be alive to experience it,” he says, “but I think a museum display is not enough.”
There are more spaces where Boafo wants to show and share his work. “You have to work hard to have more spaces and not only institutions in Europe, but I also think that showing in institutions here in the [African] continent is also something I’m looking forward to doing.
The themes of Boafo’s practice stem from a personal place. One of his most notable works is ‘Body Politics’. He details his experiences of discrimination stemming from his nationality and race when he first moved to Vienna, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts. “I think the thing about discrimination and stereotyping is that people have a position on what blackness is to them, and they have a box for it,” he says. “There’s been a lot of work done to change that perception, so I needed to do it differently because most of the time people yell and yell. And I don’t see anything wrong with that because that’s the way they maybe want to explain it.” or deal with the situation. In my case, I wanted them to know what I’m talking about instead of complaining about how they see me. I wanted to show them how they should see me.”
‘Body Politics’ inadvertently marked the beginning of his rise in the art world. Some three years after his move to the Austrian capital, she received the jury prize at the 2017 Walter Koschatzky Art Prize.
Boafo is also a student at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in his home country. He won Best Abstract Painter of the Year and Best Portrait Artist of the Year in 2007 and 2008, respectively.
A 2018 discovery of Boafo’s work on Instagram by an African-American portrait artist Kehinde Wiley (known, among other things, for his portrayal of former US President Barack Obama) initiated the integration of him and his craft. Wiley bought a painting and became an advocate of his work by featuring Boafo in his galleries.
She has since won the STRABAG Art International Award in 2019, and her works are in public and private collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Rubell Museum, and the Albertina Museum in Vienna. , where do you live. .
In light of the presentation of works created over the past five years at your museum debut, how would you say your craft has evolved over the years? “I think one thing that is very clear in my work is depth, consistency and maturity. As much as I will say that my color palette has grown”, says Boafo. “My way of playing with tones and details has also changed. There is more abstraction in that figuration. That’s also another growth that I hope to explore.”
“I think in general, it’s not just figuration or portraiture. It’s like, you know, all the elements: figuration, portraiture, landscape, abstraction. They are all in a single element”, adds Boafo.
He will be in Ghana in December to open his artist residency, where he will collaborate with many artists for a group show as part of his opening. The space is for “artists to come and experiment, explore and grow with their work,” says Boafo. The Deep Pink Sofa may not be there, but he envisions it as a cozy space nonetheless.
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