Gilles Deleuze once said, “The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.” In his latest series of portraits, painter Amoako Boafo’s figures are often depicted accompanied by those ever-present but elusive companions. As a counterpoint to the...

Portraying individuals from the Diaspora and beyond, he invites a reflection on Black subjectivity. Great art.   View more

Amoako Boafo. “RED FRAMES” (2021). Oil on canvas. 40” x 30”. ©Thomas Amoako Boafo, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Photo Alan Shaffer. After I leave Amoako Boafo’s studio in Los Angeles, I can’t get James Baldwin out of my mind....

Amoako Boafo is a rising art-world superstar. The 36-year-old Ghanaian artist’s work, characterized by bright colors and textured finger painting, highlights Black identity and the African diaspora with complexity and warmth: in the 2020 painting The Pink...

Last Wednesday, three portraits painted by the Vienna-based Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo were launched from Texas into space. They floated in the void before coming back down to Earth just eleven minutes later. The launch of the “Suborbital Triptych” (2021) was a...

Amoako Boafo’s work questions contemporary misunderstandings of blackness by contrasting personal and structural perceptions and portrayals of black people. His heavily expressionistic and sensitive portraits of friends and acquaintances highlight their...