Amoako Boafo
Text by Osei Bonsu, Rachel Cargle, Mutombo Da Poet, Aja Monet
Interview by Paul Schimmel
Foreword by Camille Weiner
Published by Roberts Projects, Los Angeles
The first monograph on the sinuous, exhilaratingly colorful and pattern-filled portraiture of Amoako Boafo.
Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo has built a practice synthesizing the ways that art both reflects and perpetuates the power of representation. Amoako Boafo is the first monograph to comprehensively examine the artist's career to date.
Exclusively portraying individuals from the diaspora and beyond, Boafo invites a reflection on Black subjectivity, diversity and complexity. His portraits, notable for their bold colors and patterns, celebrate his subjects as a means to challenge portrayals that objectify and dehumanize Blackness. As Boafo has stated, “the primary idea of my practice is representation, documenting, celebrating and showing new ways to approach Blackness.”
The monograph includes essays by leading voices: Osei Bonsu, curator of International Art at Tate Modern, London; Paul Schimmel, Los Angeles-based independent curator and art historian; Rachel Cargle, author, speaker, activist known for her involvement in anti-racism, including her founding of the Loveland Foundation; Mutombo Da Poet, Ghanian poet and writer who pioneered the spoken word format in his country; and Aja Monet, American contemporary poet, writer, lyricist and activist.
Amoako Boafo
Published by Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California, 2022
Format: Hardcover, 8.75 x 13 inches
204 pages / 140 color images / 10 b&w images
English
Distributed throughout the world by Artbook | D.A.P.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022911682
ISBN: 978-1-957920-99-3