The British artist and writer Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, born 1977 in London, combines drawings, found images and imagination in figurative paintings. The ambiguous characters are based on visual notes and appear in everyday scenes, in intimate and timeless moments. These works are not portraits in the sense that they depict actual people, and yet the characters have the air of being distinct, unique individuals.
A profound interest in paint, its materiality, and how the eye perceives color informs Yiadom-Boakye’s practice. The poetic titles of her paintings add veritable brush strokes to the canvas. She sees visual art and literature as separate yet intertwined forms of creativity. Along with the visual narratives, each title is intended as a part of the painting, as opposed to an explanation of it.
Fly in League with the Night presented at Moderna Museet is the artist’s largest retrospective exhibition to date, and includes roughly 80 paintings spanning her entire career, from the graduation show at the Royal Academy Schools to today. The exhibition is produced in close collaboration with Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who instead of ordering her works chronologically, has created contexts, moods, and dialogues between works.