Born in Accra, Ghana’s lively capital, Amoako Boafo has become a transformative force in contemporary African art. Renowned for his striking portraiture and figurative painting, this Ghanaian artist captivates global audiences with bold images and an emotionally charged style. His rapid rise from local art scenes to major international exhibitions marks a pivotal moment in the representation of black bodies within visual culture, inviting viewers into intimate dialogues with his sitters. 

By Jamilah Rose-Roberts

There is a physical quality to Amoako Boafo’s paintings that distinguishes them immediately within contemporary portraiture. His figures hold a composure that recalls the long history of painted portraiture, though the surfaces that describe them remain unmistakably contemporary. Skin is not brushed into being through careful layering of paint; instead, Boafo works directly with his hands, pressing pigment onto canvas with his fingers so that gesture and contact remain visible across the surface.

By Richard Allen May III

Look at Amoako Boafo's finger-painted portraits—the artist's literal prints visible on canvas, refusing mediation between hand, paint, and viewer. Something has shifted in how art communicates. Enter Directism: a framework for understanding art that privileges unmediated encounter, compressed meaning, and strategic visibility over contemplation, elaboration, and passive observation. Boafo's finger-painted technique leaves literal prints on canvas—evidence of Black hands creating Black subjects who stare back, refusing erasure.

By Nereya Otieno

In the heart of Los Angeles, Amoako Boafo’s I Bring Home With Me at Roberts Projects offers a respite from the chaotic energy of nearby Hollywood and all its thirsty worshippers. The new exhibition of lauded Vienna-based painter Amoako Boafo is a portal to a different city, in a vastly different part of the world: his hometown of Accra, Ghana. Through 22 portraits, including two of himself, done in his signature elegantly rustic style of collaged finger trails instead of typical brushstrokes, the artist introduces viewers to the people, faces, and patterns shaping his sense of place.  

By Paul Laster

His third solo show with the gallery since 2019, “I Bring Home with Me Everywhere I Go,” re-creates his Accra studio to scale within its space, showcasing a selection of new paintings and furnishings integrated into an architectural setting. Created by Boafo in partnership with architect and designer Glenn DeRoche of DeRoche Projects, the installation embodies the creative spirit rooted in his cultural heritage, emphasizing how his community shapes his work and carries deep emotional meaning for him.

By Coco Worthe

In Mid-City Amoako Boafo presents one of the strongest gallery exhibitions of LA Art Week 2026,  “I Bring Home With Me”. His portraits are instantly recognizable for their finger-painted surfaces and saturated color. Beyond the texture lies a sustained meditation on Black identity, migration, and presence.

By Katy Donoghue

Marking the centennial of Betye Saar, Roberts Projects presents altered Polaroids, sketchbooks, and archival materials by the Black Arts Movement pioneer. The booth situates Saar’s intimate, incisive works alongside artists including Amoako Boafo and Suchitra Mattai, creating a layered conversation about assemblage, spirituality, and Black feminist thought. It is both homage and continuation.

By Chahna Tank 

When an artist and an architect collaborate across multiple projects, the relationship begins to resemble an ongoing conversation rather than a series of individual commissions—one in which ideas are carried forward through spaces as much as through the surface of the canvas. 

The best of the best art to see in LA during Frieze Week: Amoako Boafo, ‘Bring Home with Me’, Roberts Projects

Amoako Boafo’s third solo show with Roberts Projects celebrates Blackness through a series of new paintings integrated within an architectural re-creation of the artist’s studio in Accra, Ghana.

– Recommended by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

Walking into Amoako Boafo’s latest exhibition at Roberts Projects, “I Bring Home with Me,” is a bit like stepping into a memory palace that has been physically manifested in Mid-Wilshire. This is Boafo’s third solo outing with the gallery, and it finds the Ghanaian painter moving beyond the mere confines of the canvas to construct an environment—a 1:1 scale architectural recreation of his Accra studio—that houses his increasingly confident, fingertip-rendered portraits.

Expanding on Boafo’s exploration and celebration of Blackness and its diverse subjectivities, the exhibition features a group of new paintings integrated into an architectural re-creation of the artist’s studio in Accra, Ghana, built to scale within the gallery. Conceived by Boafo in collaboration with architect and designer Glenn DeRoche of DeRoche Projects, the installation reflects the creative energy of his cultural background, highlighting how his community personally influences his practice and holds formative emotional significance for the artist.

By Grace Ebert

In I Bring Home with Me, Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo recreates his Accra studio in an architectural reproduction within Roberts Projects’ Los Angeles gallery. Boafo is known for his stylized portraiture of Black people, whose skin the artist renders in swirling gestures made with his fingers. 

By Jessica Gelt

The exhibition “I Bring Home with Me” features new work by Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo, exploring and celebrating Blackness and its perspectives, installed within an architectural re-creation of the artist’s studio in Accra. The artist combines finger painting and collaging on the surface of his canvases to evoke vivid colors, bold compositions, patterns and textures.

By Keith Estiler 

For his third solo presentation with Roberts Projects, contemporary heavyweight Amoako Boafo is blurring the lines between creation and exhibition. Titled I Bring Home with Me, the show transports the sensory energy of Accra, Ghana to Los Angeles by physically recreating the artist’s studio within the gallery walls.

Roberts Projects is pleased to present I bring home with me, an exhibition of new work by Amoako Boafo and the artist’s third solo show with the gallery. Expanding on Boafo’s exploration and celebration of Blackness and its diverse subjectivities, the exhibition features a group of new paintings that are integrated within an architectural re-creation of the artist’s studio in Accra, Ghana, built to scale inside the gallery.

By Maxwell Rabb

“I’m looking forward to the Amoako Boafo opening at Roberts Projects in L.A. on January 17th,” Sean Green, founder of art and technology company ARTERNAL, told Artsy. “I’m a fan of how he celebrates Blackness and its diverse subjectivities.”

Roberts Projects is pleased to present I Bring Home with Me, an exhibition of new work by Amoako Boafo and the artist’s third solo show with the gallery. Expanding on Boafo’s exploration and celebration of Blackness and its diverse subjectivities, the exhibition features a group of new paintings that are integrated within an architectural re-creation of the artist’s studio in Accra, Ghana, built to scale inside the gallery. 

By Karla Marie Sanford

The title of Accra-based artist Amoako Boafo’s third solo show at Roberts Projects, “I Bring Home With Me,” is not hyperbole but an assertion. In the show, portraits of Black subjects, rendered in the artist’s signature of painting with his fingertips, are presented in a built-to-scale architectural re-creation of Boafo’s studio in Accra, Ghana.

By Katya Kazakina

The stakes were high heading into the fair. Art Basel Miami Beach arrives at the end of a volatile year, which has seen a market contraction at auctions and galleries. The slower pace was a function of fewer speculators, who have fueled the market since the pandemic. “They hardly look at things,” said Bennett Roberts, whose Roberts Projects gallery sold multiple works under $120,000. “This is better. It’s more considered.” A $350,000 painting by Amoako Boafo, a darling of speculators since 2019, was yet to be sold. 

By Folasade Ologundudu

Last month, artist Amoako Boafo launched dot.ateliers, his highly anticipated artist residency, foundation, and exhibition space in his native home of Accra, Ghana. 

From a queer Chicanx writer’s debut collection of personal essays to timeless catalogues and a survey of the history of the artist’s studio, here are 20 art books that informed and broadened our worldviews in 2022. Also, note Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s Elite Capture, which is not strictly an art book but certainly a must-read for anyone in the art field.

Further inside the maze, Boafo appears again on the wall at Roberts Projects, his pink multitone painting Umbrella, 2021, lending its warmth to the larger group display. The Los Angeles gallery is also exhibiting Blue Mystic Window w/ Moons & Stars, a new mixed-media work by the 96-year-old artist Betye Saar that depicts a window view of a constellation-adorned night sky. 

Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo is one of the biggest art sensations of the last few years. Now, fresh from having his art literally flown into space last year by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket, he has his first museum exhibition, which is currently on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, “Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks.”

From a photorealistic painting by Wilhelm Sasnal to a portrait by Amoako Boafo, the renowned musician and artist shares his top picks from the Frieze Los Angeles 2022 edition

Roberts Projects is showing a new site-specific installation by Betye Saar that reinterprets her 1983 city-commissioned mural L.A. Energy, which the 95-year-old artist will be creating in person, on-site. "We're not worried about walk-in sales, more about having the best booth," said gallery co-owner Bennett Roberts, who is also showing works by Amoako Boafo, Brenna Youngblood, and Kehinde Wiley. 

Viennese Modernism and its art is more on trend - and international - than ever before. As demonstrated by Ghana-born Amoako Boafo. The 37-Year-old is currently taking the US art market by storm. His works adorn the walls of the Guggenheim in New York as well as the museum run by high-profile US collectors Don and Mera Rubell. Prices for his evocatic works went through the roof in 2020. These days, Boafos can change hands for up to a million dollars. The international art world cannot get enough. But what is so special about Boafo's art? The focus of his work is on people of color. He portraits people of the diaspora, plays with their perceptions of themselves and their beauty, inviting the beholder to reflect on notions of Black subjectivity. 

When people talk about Amoako Boafo, they often speak in a kind of cosmic hyperbole. He’s the art world’s newest “star,”his rise has been described as “meteoric,” his auction prices are “astronomical.” In February 2020, the Ghanaian artist’s The Lemon Bathing Suit sold for an unprecedented $880k—more than 13 times its high estimate. Barely ten months later, Boafo’s rendering of the model Baba Diop sold for over 1 million US dollars at auction, breaking the artist’s record. This year, three of his paintings were actually, physically, sent into space. But what makes Boafo’s work so remarkable is in some ways the antithesis of astral: its unmistakable tenderness—resolutely human, irrefutably down to earth.

Amoako Boafo’s career trajectory has been stratospheric. Literally: in July he was commissioned by Uplift Aerospace to paint the exterior of a rocket (built by the Jeff Bezos-owned company Blue Origin) that launched into space in August. Success for the artist, whose portraits are usually painted directly with his fingers, has been double-edged though, as his work has been targeted by speculative collectors looking to flip it for a quick buck. Having received a debut institutional solo show at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora, the artist himself is nonetheless determined to build his career on less mercantile foundations. At home in Accra he has expanded his own studio to include several neighbouring spaces, which other emerging artists can use for free. ‘The vision is to provide a safe space where artists can come together, practice, collaborate, experiment, and also learn to express their art in the purest of ways,’ Boafo told Artnet. ‘The art scene in Ghana has always been about collaborations and coexistence.’

Unless you have been living under an art-deprived rock, you probably recognize the striking work of Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo. The painter is on a still-ascending meteoric rise and undoubtedly one of the buzziest artists of the moment. In the span of a mere few years, Boafo transitioned from struggling to sell his works in Accra, Ghana, for $100 each to hosting supermodel-and starlet-studded dinners at Faena Hotel during Art Basel Miami Beach and having his work in the collections of major museums including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Rubell Museum in Miami and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Amoako Boafo isn’t painting for the market. But the market has certainly been buying. Now San Franciscans have the opportunity to see what all the buzz is about in “Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks.”

The two-room show at the Museum of the African Diaspora, on exhibit through Feb. 27, features 18 oil portraits produced over the past several years since Boafo began his signature finger-painting technique. It’s an opportunity to get up close to art history in the making.

The portraits of Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo in exhibition at Roberts Projects, “Singular Duality: Me Can Make We,” express complexities both internal and external in a vibrant celebration of Blackness.

Black portraiture – which has been routinely excluded from the western art historical canon – is a subject that has been by some of the greatest contemporary artists, the likes of Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. But what sets Boafo apart is the personal and impressionistic style of his subjects. The textured brushstrokes of the skin, mixing tan, blue, and black to create a complex color gradient, point to the intense care that Boafo wields. These direct signs of the artist illustrate the time and thought with which Boafo approaches his craft.

In each installment of The Artists, T highlights a recent or little-seen work by a Black artist, along with a few words from that artist putting the work in context. This week, we’re looking at a piece by the painter Amoako Boafo that appears in his solo exhibition “Singular Duality: Me Can Make We,” on view at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles through November 6.

They say the sky’s the limit, but with Amoako Boafo, it’s outer space. In early August this year, the Ghanaian self-taught artist was commissioned to paint a new art piece titled Suborbital Triptych on three panels of the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket ship (the new Jeff Bezos-founded project) – making Amoako Boafo the first black artist to do so.

With a new exhibition, Singular Duality: Me Can Make We, about to open in LA’s Roberts Projects, Boafo is really making a name for himself in the art world with his distinctive, bold paintings. His work sits naturally among names such as Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Henry Taylor, and Kehinde Wiley. And he’s incisive when it comes to the thematic ideas he’s interested in exploring in his work: “representation, documentation, and celebration of Blackness.” 

Amoako Boafo’s second exhibition at Roberts Projects, Singular Duality: Me Can Make We, represents an exploration into personal identity and the dualities that comprise and shape our human existence. On the surface, this exhibition both examines and celebrates the theme of Blackness, as each image is suggestive of empowerment and individuality. Yet upon deeper reflection, we see the artist pushing the limits of materiality and content in new and exciting ways. The result is a powerful and persuasive body of work, one which serves as a compelling visual testament to the beauty of the Black experience.

Known for creating colorful figurative paintings that challenge objectifying and dehumanizing representations of Blackness and celebrate the African diaspora, artist Amoako Boafo will unveil a new selection of large-scale works at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles. Painted over the last year, the canvases explore the contrast between internal and external worlds as well as shadow and light.

In the past few years, Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo has electrified the art world with his captivating and contorted portraits of Black figures against bright, often monochromatic backgrounds. Rendered in pulsating, evocative marks, the portraits have often conjured up comparisons to the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. 

Boafo, who is based in Vienna, has said he wanted his paintings to serve as a space for Black people to exist confidently and joyfully. While much attention has been paid to his meteoric art market ascent, we wondered, what his day-to-day practice actually looks like.

The exhibition “Soul of Black Folks,” curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, will feature more than 20 works by Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo. It will specifically explore Boafo’s practice as a portrait artist.

“There’s a real consideration of Black subjectivity and Black interiority within the works that are being presented,” said Elena Gross, MoAD’s director of exhibitions and curatorial affairs. “Specifically, I think Larry is very interested in thinking about Amoako’s work as being invested in the Black gaze and being kind of a countering of the Western canonical sense of the white gaze that is imposed upon work.”

The exhibition takes its title from civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois’ book “The Souls of Black Folk.” Du Bois is buried in the Osu neighborhood of the city of Accra in Ghana, where Boafo grew up.

By Andrianna Campbell-LaFleur

Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo, who lives in Vienna and studies at the Academy of Fine Arts there, was virtually unknown in the United States until the painter Kehinde Wiley contacted him in 2018 via Instagram. Wiley sent a short note and a line of encouragement and eventually an introduction to his Los Angeles dealers, Julie and Bennett Roberts of Roberts Projects. Boafo soon had a solo show at the gallery, and another is scheduled for next year.

By Ryan Waddoups

Amoako Boafo’s paintings immediately resonated with Dior Homme artistic director Kim Jones, who had presented his pre-fall collection in a buzzy runway show across from the Rubell Museum during Art Basel. Jones’s tenure at the French luxury label has been notably marked by a series of ambitious blue-chip artist collaborations (Daniel Arsham, KAWS, and Hajime Sorayama among them) that have yielded some wildly imaginative and over-the-top takes on traditional menswear.

By Belinda Kazeem-Kamin ́ski

It’s been one and a half months that I am back from Accra. Amoako Boafo, a longtime friend and collaborator and above all an outstanding painter who has been attracting a lot of attention in the last two years, is one of the reasons I can continue my research in the city. I got to know Amoako through a close friend—somehow, we black art students at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna just happen to come across each other quite quickly... Soon after, I saw the first paintings he did in Vienna. Painted on re-used cardboards, declinations of German verbs splattered across the image, centering a portrait of a Black subject—himself—strikingly set apart from a monochrome background.

By Harley Wong

Amoako Boafo has experienced a meteoric rise in the art world over the past year. Known for large-scale portraits of Black subjects rendered in bold, gestural strokes, Boafo has only gained momentum in 2020. Recently, in April 2020, he donated a painting, Aurore Iradukunda (2020), to an online benefit auction supporting the Museum of the African Diaspora during the COVID-19 pandemic. The painting sold in early May for $190,000, nearly six times its $35,000 estimate.

Amoako Boafo’s enticing, colorful portraits pack a punch with their striking simplicity. But beneath the surface lies a deeper intention, as the Ghana-born, Austria-based artist attempts to find new ways to approach the complicated subjects of identity and race. “My role as an artist is to show alternate perspectives,” says Boafo. “I want to speak for the people who are unable to speak for themselves.” 

Amoako Boafo's The Lemon Bathing Suit (2019) fetched an eye-watering £675,000 (US $881,550) at Phillips' 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London last week. The price eclipsed the estimate of £30,000-£50,000 (US $38,700-$64,500) more than ten times over.

The result is especially surprising given Boafo's age—he's just 36—and because it's the first time his work has gone under the hammer. So who is Boafo, and why is he so keenly sought after?

By Amy O'Sullivan

Works by rising stars from Côte d'Ivoire and South Africa have also been in high demand during the city's Art Week.

By Indya Brown and Sarah Spellings

Amoako Boafo’s swirling, colorful portraits are easy to like on a purely aesthetic level. But his work is packed with meaning. The Accra-born, Vienna-based artist uses oils, acrylics, and pastels to explore masculinity, diaspora, and the role of the muse in art. The primary idea, he says, is “representation — documenting, celebrating, and finding new ways to approach blackness.”

By Kelly Crow

Amoako Boafo, a 35-year-old artist from Ghana backed by powerful collectors Don and Mera Rubell, steps into the art fair’s fray.

About a decade ago, Amoako Boafo was working as a pallbearer in his home city of Accra in Ghana, selling portraits for $100 apiece in shows mounted in hotel lobbies. Now, the 35-year-old is being positioned to break out at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair.

The artist, whose name is pronounced “Ah-moe-AH-ko Bo-AH-fo,” has the backing of Don and Mera Rubell, longtime Miami collectors who are known for propelling artists to new heights. They are devoting an entire room to the artist at their new Rubell Museum, an exhibition space that opens to the public Wednesday and is shaping up to be the must-see show of fair week.

By Claire Selvin

The Rubell Museum in Miami, which will open its new 100,000-square-foot space in the city’s Allapattah neighborhood on December 4, has been known for jumpstarting the careers of young artists with its coveted residency program supported by the Knight Foundation. Sterling Ruby, who has gone on to have his works shown in major exhibitions like the Whitney Biennial and to sell for over $1 million at auction, became the first artist-in-residence in 2011 (and, coincidentally, will have a show this December at the ICA Miami).

By Rebecca Anne Proctor

Ask a question about the African art market, and many experts will be quick to tell you that there is no such thing. How could one market possibly encompass 54 countries, 1.2 billion people, and countless aesthetic traditions?

It can’t. But that won’t stop the global art market from trying. The commercial sector has a way of co-opting talent into the international art slipstream (sometimes flattening history and context in the process). It has done so with artists—and entire movements—from Asia and Latin America in the past. Africa may be next in line.

By Maria Vogel

AMOAKO BOAFO’S figurative work has captured our eye with its thick, gestural, and painterly brush strokes. Boafo’s work teeters the line between precision and looseness in a breathtaking, novel fashion. Ghanaian-born and Vienna-based Boafo paints portraits of people in his life who he admires for celebrating their blackness. Here, Boafo gives us more insight into his electrifying practice.

By Sharon Mizota

Amoako Boafo’s portrait paintings are beguiling in their simplicity. His figures, often isolated on spare or monochrome backgrounds, gaze out matter-of-factly, confidently asserting their presence. Their poses are relaxed, sometimes playful, imbuing the images with a casual intimacy. And they make the artist’s first solo exhibition at Roberts Projects a quiet delight.

By Victoria L. Valentine

After moving to Vienna, Amoako Boafo began a new portrait series. The work grew less out of inspiration and more out of motivation. Ghanaian-born Boafo found the Austrian capital generally unreceptive to black people and the art scene was just as challenging. The portrait series served as a means of self preservation—a celebration of his identity and blackness.

By Lucy Birmingham

African painter Amoako Boafo is bringing a fresh and unique perspective to portraiture and figurative painting. Based in Vienna since about 2014, the young Ghanaian is now showing a series of new works titled “Black Diaspora” that cast a subtle, but probing look at the black experience in Europe and conservative Austria through the eyes of his subjects.