GHANA- Friday, July 17, 2020,/ https://africanpostonline.com/ Born in Accra but based in Vienna, Amoako Boafo is a painter known for his enticing portrait paintings in their lucidity which accentuates the figures in the work. Some of his series include the Black Diaspora portraits which serve as a means of celebrating his blackness.
Boafo was recently named by Mera and Don Rubell of the new Rubell Museum as it’s inaugural artist-in-residence. The rising talent gained recognition from various fashion and art enthusiasts one of which include Kim Jones, Creative Director for Dior Men. Boafo Amoako is noted for his “rippling, large-scale African diaspora portraits which for him “represent, document, celebrate and show new ways to approach Blackness”.
He does this by creating a classical background theme, using brushes, but in the end, the body of the actual subject is finger painted.
“I See Me”, the exhibition that is widely considered as his breakthrough work, established Boafo as an emerging world-force in the artistic industry. This exhibition placed him on the forefront and connected him with the world’s foremost collectors.
His works resonated easily with Dior Homme’s Artistic Director Kim Jones who had presented his pre-fall collection from the Rubell Museum during the Art Basel.
According to Kim, Boafo’s work spoke to him and he was immediately drawn to it. “The intensity of his portraits, the power of movement and the choice of colours in them… everything touches me in his work and the way he sees things. I could just see his work turning into things in front of my eyes” said Jones in an interview with British Vogue.
Collaborating with a black artist at a time when the fashion industry is increasingly being called out as racist could be seen as opportunistic. But for Kim who grew up in Ghana, this is far more personal to him. “African art’s been important to me” he stresse.
Source: Deborah Narkoah -African Post Online
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I’m Deborah Aba Narkoah. I’m an avid reader, writer and public speaker.
