Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in league with the night
Tate Britain, London, UK
18 November 2020 – 31 May 2021
I was pleased to see this exhibition just after it opened at Tate Britain—mainly because, soon after Christmas, the UK went back into lockdown for COVID-19 and all art galleries closed again. Happily, the museum has now reopened, and if you’re in London you can still visit the show until 31 May.
The artist, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, is a British painter and writer born in London in 1977 to Ghanaian parents, and she’s widely regarded as one of the most acclaimed painters working today. It isn’t surprising: she has years of rigorous academic training behind her. She learned to paint from life but shifted her approach early on, while studying at Falmouth School of Art on the Cornish coast. There, she realised she was less interested in portraying specific individuals and more absorbed by the act and language of painting itself.
Yiadom-Boakye paints Black figures using the most traditional of European art forms—oil on canvas. Her influences include Velázquez, Manet, Degas, and Sickert. Her technical mastery has earned her significant recognition, including the prestigious Carnegie Prize in 2018 and a place on the Turner Prize shortlist in 2013.
She is well known for her enigmatic portraits of fictitious people who inhabit private, self-contained worlds. Both familiar and mysterious, her figures seem to invite viewers to project their own interpretations, prompting subtle but important questions about identity and representation. In a recent interview she mentioned that she keeps returning to the idea of infinity.
Her inspiration comes from found images, memory, literature, and the history of painting. Each canvas becomes an exploration of mood, movement, and atmosphere, worked out directly on the surface. I understand why she says her figures aren’t real people—even if their starting points sometimes are. She prefers to place narrative responsibility on the viewer, allowing our imaginations to unfold freely in front of her work, something that doesn’t happen when we look at a portrait tied to an actual sitter.
“I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about.”
—Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
A writer of prose and poetry as well as a painter, Yiadom-Boakye considers these creative practices separate yet intertwined. She gives her paintings poetic titles, which she describes as “an extra brush-mark,” though never as an explanation—more as an invitation.
We at The Art Berries both enjoyed this exhibition. The figures command attention, whether through the intensity of their gaze or the quiet mystery lingering behind the scenes. They feel like fragments of a dream or an old memory suspended outside of time. Although her palette often appears subdued at first glance, certain works contain unexpected bursts of vibrancy—much like the vivid details that surface in dreams.
In her search for infinity, Yiadom-Boakye uses timeless elements. The enigmatic subjects, the sensuality running through many of the works, and her unwavering focus on Black figures make these paintings unmistakably contemporary, even as they echo the classical traditions she so deeply engages with.
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