Amoako Boafo

The Belvedere is staging Europe’s first museum exhibition on the art of Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo (born 1984 in Accra). As one of the most important voices from a new generation of Black artists, Boafo portrays his friends, acquaintances, and people from public life, presenting a contemporary image of Black self-empowerment and self-perception.

This exhibition closes, for the time being, a circle in the artist’s biography: After graduating from art college in Accra, Boafo began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 2014. These were years that shaped him as an artist, in which he developed his signature style characterized by his unusual finger-painting technique. Applied to the human body, this creates a sculptural effect that contrasts with the flatness of the rest of the painting. The people portrayed by Boafo embody the idea of Black identity that draws on its own culture, to be understood as an act of resistance against the racist labels of a predominantly white society. This form of Black subjectivity is expressed in the appearance of the sitters, who confront the viewer as self-confident individuals and often seek direct eye contact. Boafo imagined the collage-like garments using textured paper, borrowing from floral and geometric wallpaper patterns as well as referencing Black culture’s historical and political dress codes. The artist’s intensive engagement with Black history is subtly reflected in his paintings that include motifs inspired by literary works by key pioneers of the Black Freedom Movement.

In addition to the exhibition at the Lower Belvedere, Boafo’s works will be integrated in the permanent displays on Vienna 1900 at the Upper Belvedere, showing them in connection with the pictures of key art-historical figures such as Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt.