Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Citrine By The Ounce, 2014 | Private collection © Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Fly in League with the Night is the largest survey to date of the work of British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977, London). The exhibition presents 67 paintings spanning two decades.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye makes figurative paintings drawn from a variety of source material. Her figures inhabit deliberately enigmatic settings that are timeless and often abstract. Working in oil paint on canvas or coarse linen, she has developed a language of painting that is uniquely her own.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, To Improvise A Mountain, 2018 | Courtesy of the Artist, Corvi-Mora, London and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York © Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye | Photo Marcus Leith
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Amaranthine, 2018 | Courtesy of the Artist, Corvi-Mora, London, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York | © Courtesy of Yiadom-Boakye
Fly in League with the Night is the first exhibition to celebrate Yiadom-Boakye’s work in depth. It spans work that she made as a student at London’s Royal Academy Schools up to her most recent paintings made in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. Yiadom-Boakye has been closely involved in the selection and arrangement of her work. The exhibition evolves according to the dynamics and conversations between paintings, without a strict chronology. ‘I wanted to think about a dialogue between the works, much the way I do when they’re in the studio, and also to consider the sequence or rhythm as you move through the galleries’ the artist explains.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, A Passion Like No Other, 2012 | Collection Lonti Ebers © Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tie The Temptress To The Trojan, 2018 | Private collection, Toronto © Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
The figures in Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings seem both familiar and mysterious. Each painting is made from a composite archive of found images supplemented by her own imagination, rendered in expressive, short brushstrokes and a distinctive palette of dark, dramatic tones. By stripping away the signifiers of any particular era, her figures appear to exist outside of a specific time or place remaining open to different narratives, memories and interpretations.
At Ease As The Day Breaks
Beside Its Erasure
And At Pains To Temper The Light
At Liberty Like The Owl When
The Need Comes Knocking
To Fly In League With The Night.
–Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is both a painter and a writer of prose and poetry. For her, the two forms of creativity are separate but intertwined. ‘I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about,’ she has said. She refers to her paintings’ evocative titles as ‘an extra brush-mark.’ They are integral to each work but are not an explanation or description. The exhibition’s title is from a poem by the artist, written especially for this occasion.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, All Manner Of Comforts, 2016 | Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris | © Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Condor And The Mole, 2011 | Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Curators Andrea Schlieker, Director of Exhibitions and Displays, and Isabella Maidment, Curator of Contemporary British Art, assisted by Aïcha Mehrez, Assistant Curator, Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain.
The exhibition Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Fly in League with the Night is organized by Tate Britain in collaboration with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean.
With the support of Degroof Petercam, Fondation Loo & Lou.
Fly in League with the Night / Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Mid-Career Retrospective – International Touring Exhibition
April 1 – September 5, 2022 / Mudam Luxembourg
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