Amoako Boafo Ghana, b. 1984

Amoako Boafo depicts a wide range of subjects including friends, acquaintances and notable figures from public life, his portraits invite meaningful reflections on the diversity and complexity of Black subjectivity. Renowned for their vivid colors, bold compositions, patterns and textured surfaces, Boafo’s paintings embody a gestural mark-making evocative of 20th-century modernism. His unique approach combines finger-painting and collaging on the surface of his canvases, imbuing his work with a singular tenderness that challenges stereotypical representations of Blackness.

 

Solo exhibitions include Amoako Boafo: I Have Been Here Before, Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongju, South Korea (2025); Amoako Boafo: Proper Love, Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria (2024); Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2021), travelled to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX (2022), Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (2023), Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO (2024); SINGULAR DUALITY: ME CAN MAKE WE, Roberts Projects, Culver City, CA (2021); I SEE ME, Roberts Projects, Culver City, CA (2019) and Step Into the Darkness, Kunsthalle Vienna, Vienna, Austria (2016). 

 

Boafo’s work is featured in numerous public collections, including The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Blenheim Art Foundation, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, UK; Frye Art Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria; Longlati Foundation; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Miettinen Collection, Helsinki, Finland; Minneapolis Art Institute, Minneapolis, MN; Rubell Museum, Miami, FL; The Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris, France and Colección SOLO, Madrid, Spain, among others.