Shelves for Dynamite

Writer and painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye creates figures from imagination and memory that deliberately distance the viewer from any personal narrative, time, or place. According to Yiadom-Boakye, her painting and writings —short stories, poems, and the titles of her paintings—work in parallel to one another to allow space for one’s imagination to flourish. She describes her fictional subjects as “suggestions of people. . . . They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether.” While rooted in traditional portraiture—her subjects are often arranged in poses drawn from the history of European and Euro-American art—Yiadom-Boakye’s process is decidedly contemporary, her paintings typically completed in a day to best capture a moment or her stream of consciousness.