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Artist Amoako Boafo: On Art and Portraiture
September 28, 2022 | 12:00 pm–12:45 pm
FREE
This program is online only (via Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook Live). Advance registration is required for Zoom participation, including the chance to ask the artist a question (time permitting). After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the talk.
Join artist Amoako Boafo and Hirshhorn Head Curator Evelyn Hankins to explore representations of personal identity and how Blackness has often been objectified in both popular media and art.
Boafo’s paintings are characterized by their rich color and striking portrayals of African Diasporic subjects that challenge conventional notions of both Blackness and gender. Boafo often takes inspiration from photographs of people in his own life. He then meticulously renders his paintings’ surfaces and palettes to create portraits where style and fashion merge together in celebration of his subjects’ identify. By challenging conventional representations and offering new possibilities for the construction of Black identities, Boafo highlights the critical role portraiture can play within contemporary culture.
Boafo’s portrait Cobalt Blue Dress (2020) recently entered the Hirshhorn Collection through a generous gift by Sandra Hoffen.
SCHEDULE
11:50 am EST | Zoom broadcast opens
12 pm EST | Amoako Boafo in conversation with Evelyn Hankins
ASL translation will be provided on Zoom and CART (real-time captioning) will be provided across all platforms. If you have any questions about accessibility for this program, please email hirshhornexperience@si.edu.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Amoako Boafo was raised in Osu, Accra – Ghana. He studied at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra in 2007, before attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria. Boafo was awarded with the jury prize, Walter Koschatzky Art Prize in 2017 and the STRABAG Art award International in 2019 both in Vienna, Austria. Also in 2019, he was the first artist-in-residency at the new Rubell Museum in Miami, Florida and collaborated with Kim Jones, Dior Men’s creative director, for Dior’s Spring/Summer 2021 Men Collection in 2020. In 2021 Boafo was selected by Uplift Aerospace to create the inaugural “Suborbital Triptych” on the exterior panels of a Blue Origin New Shepard space rocket. Widely collected by prestigious private and public collectors and institutions, most recently by Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis MN; the Rubell Museum, Miami, FL; Marieluise Hessel Collection, the Aishti Foundation, Antelias, Lebanon; Centre for Curatorial Studies, Berlin, Germany; Hessel Museum of Art, New York NY, the Pizzuti Collection of Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio and the Albertina Museum in Vienna among others. Boafo is regarded as a notable young voice in art of the African diaspora through his approaches to the celebration of Blackness by shaping of Black forms and their dispositions in a larger global context.
Image credit: Fabrice Gousset G
