Amoako Boafo
The Belvedere in Vienna, Austria presents Europe’s first major museum exhibition of Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo (b. 1984, Accra, Ghana). Boafo portrays his friends, acquaintances, and people from public life, presenting a contemporary image of Black self-empowerment and self-perception. This form of Black subjectivity is expressed in the appearance of the sitters, who confront the viewer as self-confident individuals.
This exhibition titled Proper Love closes, for the time being, a symbolic 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. Boafo has imagined the garments of his subjects utilizing a collage-like application with textured paper, floral and geometric wallpaper patterns which reference 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.
The exhibition is curated by Sergey Harutoonian with Vasilena Stoyanova and will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (German/English) with contributions by Ekow Eshun, Sergey Harutoonian, Mahret Ifeoma Kupka, Stella Rollig, Taiye Selasi and Vasilena Stoyanova.
Photo: Johannes Stoll, courtesy Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria