The Serpentine Gallery presents Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Verses After Dusk. The artist was born 1977, London, Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings depict figures that appear to exist outside of a specific time and place. There are very few references to background, history, activity and place of the individuals and groups of figures in her paintings.
This ambiguity, which also resonates in the enigmatic titles given to each work, invites the viewer to consider the subjects as suggestions rather than explicit narratives or specific portraits. At the heart of Yiadom-Boakye’s work is an exploration of the mechanics of painting where she reconstructs the meaning that contemporary painting could hold, in all its unexpected beauty and idiosyncratic details.
Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery is a survey of recent work presenting a comprehensive range of painterly techniques, representing the artist’s key series of works. Throughout her work, Yiadom-Boakye has raised timeless questions of identity and representation in art, bringing awareness to such matters and the shortcomings of art history.
Yiadom-Boakye has had solo exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012) and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2011). Her work has featured in group exhibitions including MIRRORCITY, Hayward Gallery, London (2014-5); the Encyclopedic Palace at the 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2013); Ungovernables: 2012 New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York (2012) and the 11th Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France (2012). In 2012, she was the recipient of the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize; and in 2013, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Verses After Dusk – Serpentine Gallery – 2 June to 13 September 2015