Portraits of black women and men, represented as so many evidences, in a daily life of sometimes magical inspiration. Born in London in 1977 to Ghanaian parents, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye continues at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao a career already well identified in the art world – her works are included in the Pinault collection and the Louis-Vuitton Foundation in France. ; they have been the subject of monographic exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London or at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Since March 31, 2023, the painter and writer has been exhibiting in the prestigious Bilbao Museum: 70 paintings and drawings, all made between the 2020 confinement and the start of 2023 in the United Kingdom. Kingdom where the artist resides.
As usual, Yiadom-Boakye accompanies his works with poetic titles, most of which are exhibited here for the first time. We find its format and its preferred themes: the black portrait, individual or collective, where lambda characters or artists are depicted, sometimes in interiors, sometimes against the backdrop of natural landscapes. The artist clarifies from the outset: “It all came from my imagination. In particular, there are things that I revisit: the living, non-human presence…” Invented (but realistic) figures that the viewer seems to surprise in their daily activities, without however disturbing them.
Organized as a stroll through three one-storey galleries of Frank Gehry’s magnificent metallic ensemble, the exhibition offers a body and soul dive into the universe of Yiadom-Boakye. Dreamlike, but not only…
“I’m quite impatient,” slips the artist with a smile, aside. In fact, at 45, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, trained at the renowned Saint Martins College of Art and Design and the Royal Academy Schools, has had a meteoric trajectory. And if it has always been very prolific, the context of Covid-19 has proven to be particularly conducive to its creation.
Flashback to 2020: “Stuck inside, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Cloistered at home in London, the painter does not have access to her creative studio. From then on, she tackled smaller formats and reconnected with other artistic forms, such as charcoal drawing. Softness mingles with intimacy in this exhibition which was initially to be held in autumn 2020, following on from the one scheduled at the Tate Modern in London. Even if they pretend to ignore the viewer by their positioning on the frame, the characters are there, very concrete in his eyes; they present themselves in familiar postures (front, profile, lying down, arms crossed, etc.). Thus, the canvas Above The Heart And Below The Mind (whose title resonates by its rhythm with that of its neighbor Under The Lungs And Over The Loins) depicts a character seated on his armchair, serene, absorbed by a scene outside the frame . In Ecstatic Streams, two women brushed in darker tones drink a glass of wine. Drawn in charcoal, Amen Sitter depicts a character who turns quietly towards the observer. But, insists the artist, “these works were not intended to be shown”.
However, faced with the quantity of works produced in three years, a finally favorable sanitary context allows the setting up of a renewed exhibition, with its own scenography. The perfect opportunity to present a complementary facet of Yiadom-Boakye’s work. Because by her own admission, she feels “very energized by this exhibit and the doors that have opened with it.” Perspectives that confirm the know-how of the artist, at ease in a wide range of pictorial mediums.
A first for this exhibition: the display of charcoal drawings. Precise and realistic without losing their suggestive power, they nourish the intimate atmosphere, a hallmark of Yiadom-Boakye’s work. Everything is played out as if the spectator were witnessing the appearance of the characters on stage or the live capture of their daydreams. All are indeed figments of the artist’s imagination. Amused, she clarifies that they were hung low, “at her height.”
Almost in counterpoint to these works on smaller formats, in a fir green gallery, here is a magnificent diptych in larger dimensions: on the left 8AM April (160 × 200 cm), to which responds Seven Acres Up on the right (180 × 200 cm) on the right. Lying down, almost one against the other, the characters seem united. Yet the work is noticeably different: oil on canvas for the first – “It goes faster”, specifies Lynette for whom time counts and scrolls, almost out of step with the pleasantness of the characters portrayed; oil on linen, denser, richer, for the second. She emphasizes the thickness of the material: “I’m more affected by the physical reality. »
Whether for the paintings or for the drawings, the colors are carefully chosen in ranges of brown, green, orange – which reinforces the use for certain drawings of brown chalk. These colors, if they make it possible to underline the postures of the characters, at the heart of the visual composition, do not inform on their location or their origin. Yiadom-Boakye works without models, only on the basis of recomposed memories and observations. It is up to the viewer to imagine the scene, guided or entertained by the poetic title that the writer puts on her trail. Interpretative game then: what if the old black woman signed Make Me Mighty sought to regain some dignity? Yiadom-Boakye, it is true, likes more than anything discreetly to blur the tracks – an exercise that she also experiments with in writing, like the mysterious short story included in the exhibition catalogue.
Therefore, to find anchors for the dreamlike characters, it is in the visual and sound inspirations that it is necessary to draw, the artist willingly claiming them. On the music side, it will be in particular Miles Davis and Prince “that I listened to all my childhood”; cinema side Almodóvar, Fassbinder or Chabrol. “The exhibition also includes a playlist and a program of films chosen by Lynette,” says curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller.
If we finally turn to literary references, the names of James Baldwin, Okwui Enwezor and Toni Morrison emerge. Figures intimately associated with the African-American community, who, like the titles of the works, would extend, disorient, complicate, even politicize the subject?
It is no less difficult to find catches in the speech of Yiadom-Boakye, able to spin endlessly between the words. In response to a question posed about the intent of her work, she replies, “There is always a political intent. Then: “I never wished to define or explain in words.” “There is a difference between narrating, recounting and feeling […] I write about the things I can’t paint and I paint the things I can’t write. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s discourse is built precisely on absence and on the unquestionable – the imaginary. This is reinforced by the scenography of the Guggenheim exhibition, giving the visitor free rein to wander as they please, from a footbridge to a gallery.
“Scrapbooks, photographs, magazines,” says curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller, despite everything, when discussing her guest’s potential sources of inspiration. In any case, especially not folklore. Everything must then be understood in the hollow of the brush – and of the word.
There remains, however, this elephant in the room: the word “black” which is never pronounced while all the characters represented are. As if there was a desire to avoid any identity or militant confinement – ??the exhibition is part of a Guggenheim season around four monographs of women artists. Moreover, if the work must speak for itself, it constitutes a discreet but powerful plea for black bodies, largely highlighted by their natural place in the decor, and their power of artistic expression.
The observer wonders: has this discourse of avoidance, nuance and freedom of the artist become necessary? As if on certain contemporary subjects, it would paradoxically have become political to stay away from politics.
Attempting to pierce through the artist’s large owl glasses, one would miss the small golden necklace on which a miniature of the African continent shines discreetly… Mystery.
* Exhibition “No Twilight is Too Powerful”, by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: from March 31 to September 10, 2023 at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
