Almond Clasp

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Downing Street

A smiling woman looks in the direction of something outside the picture frame. Her hairstyle and clothing are reminiscent of those of a ballet dancer. Her identity and the context in which she sits remain ambiguous, as her features are partly hidden and the painting’s background does not reveal any clues as to location. This is typical of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings, which focus on fictional figures that exist outside of a specific time or place.

In a 2010 interview with Nadine Rubin Nathan in the 'New York Times Magazine', Yiadom-Boakye described her compositions as ‘suggestions of people... They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether.’

This lack of fixed narrative leaves her work open to the projected imagination of the viewer. Her paintings are rooted in traditional formal considerations such as line, colour, and scale, but the subjects and the way in which the paint is handled is decidedly contemporary. Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings are typically completed in a day to best capture a single moment or stream of consciousness.

Her predominantly black cast of characters often attracts note. In a recent interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist in 'Kaleidoscope' magazine, she explained: 

'Race is something that I can completely manipulate, or reinvent, or use as I want to. Also, they’re all black because...I’m not white'.

However, Yiadom-Boakye maintains:

'People are tempted to politicize the fact that I paint black figures, and the complexity of this is an essential part of the work. But my starting point is always the language of painting itself and how that relates to the subject matter'. 

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in 1977 in London, where she is currently based. She attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools. Major solo museum shows include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2017); the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2016); and The Serpentine Gallery, London (2015). In 2013, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, and was awarded the Next Generation Prize, from the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA; in addition to winning the Future Generation Prize from Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine, in 2012. Yiadom-Boakye’s work is included in many important collections worldwide including Tate, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London; the Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Museum of Modern Art, in New York; and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Places

Subjects

neck, hair, human figure, woman, smile, vest top, hair tie

Materials & Techniques

linen, oil, oil paint, painting (as object name)

Artist

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (1977 - )

Title

Almond Clasp

Date

2018

Medium

oil on linen

Dimensions

height: 86 cm; width: 70.5 cm; depth: 4 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Corvi-Mora, March 2019

Provenance

Corvi-Mora, London UK; from whom purchased by the UK Government Art Collection, 2019

GAC number

18812