For Amoako Boafo, painting is never an isolated act. It is permeated by places, voices, and memories that extend far beyond the canvas. With "I Bring Home with Me," the Ghanaian artist presents not simply a new series of portraits, but a physical relocation of his world into the exhibition space. His Accra studio, reconstructed here to scale, is neither a backdrop nor an autobiographical reference, but an extension of his creative process. The exhibition is thus organized as an intimate and shared territory, where painting and architecture converse to make perceptible the affective, social, and cultural ecosystem of creation.
Designed in collaboration with architect and designer Glenn DeRoche, this reconstruction acts as a matrix. It embodies this fundamental space where personal histories, cultural influences, and community dynamics intertwine. For Amoako Boafo, the studio is never a solitary refuge. It is a porous space, permeated by others, by collective narratives, by a living memory. By placing it at the heart of the gallery, the artist affirms that his work is born from a constant interplay between the intimate and the collective, individual action and shared experience.
The portraits that punctuate this space embody this fertile tension. Amoako Boafo's pictorial language, often compared to the sinuous lines and expressive rigor of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, is expressed through radical simplification. The figures are isolated against monochromatic or intensely colored backgrounds, playing on contrasts and eliminating any visual embellishment. Nothing distracts the viewer from the faces, the postures, the very presence of the subjects. The bodies stand upright, solemn, sometimes imbued with an almost hieratic serenity, as if suspended outside of time.
This intensity stems largely from his unique technique. Amoako Boafo is now recognized for applying his oil paint directly with his fingers. This immediate contact with the canvas establishes a visceral relationship with the material: the skin becomes a living surface, shaped by the pressure of the gesture, worked through successive layers of nuance. The fingers literally sculpt the variations of Black skin, their depth, their inner light, giving the bodies an almost tactile density. Conversely, clothing and backgrounds are often rendered with a brush or with bold graphic patterns, creating a striking contrast between the organic vibration of the flesh and the stylization of the setting.
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In some works, this tactile painting is complemented by a more discreet yet essential intervention: embroidery, created by women from his village, is sewn directly onto the canvas. The thread then enriches the pictorial gesture, introducing another temporality, another rhythm, and above all, a collective dimension at the very heart of the work. The canvas becomes a space of silent collaboration, where individual gaze and transmitted know-how, personal creation and community memory, overlap. This presence of textiles, far from being merely decorative, inscribes the painting within a chain of shared gestures, deeply rooted in reality.
The exhibition also explores the notion of "elsewhere within the here." Upon entering, wallpaper with monstera motifs evokes the artist's everyday world and prepares the viewer for an immersive experience. Architectural elements—grid-like windows, partitions, and light-filled passageways—fragment and recompose the space, blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior. The paintings are directly integrated into the structure of the studio, while a foldable wooden sculpture inspired by the Adinkra symbol nkyinkyim hosts certain works. This motif, a symbol of movement and transformation, acts as a metaphor for the resilience of the subjects represented, but also for the artist's ability to constantly evolve his formal language.
The fluid circulation within the installation fully engages the visitor's body. The artworks are not contemplated from a distance; they are approached, discovered at the turn of a passage, as if in an inhabited space. This spatial experience echoes the communal dimension of the Accra workshop, a place of encounters, discussions, and informal transmission, the memory of which is preserved in the exhibition.
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In the adjacent galleries, the paintings continue this exploration, weaving connections between family history, local narratives, and collective memory. The figures seem to carry within them layers of time, as if the past were surfacing in the present. Amoako Boafo does not tell a linear story: he allows fragments, states of being, and silences to emerge. His work powerfully affirms that history is never fixed, that it is constantly recomposed through the bodies, gestures, and gazes of everyday life.
With "I Bring Home with Me," Amoako Boafo offers much more than an exhibition: an immersion into a sensitive and shared mental space where painting becomes a place of hospitality. By bringing his studio to the heart of the gallery, by blending finger painting and collective embroidery, he reminds us that to create is always to carry a world within oneself – and to offer others the possibility of entering it.
“I Bring Home with Me”
Roberts Projects
442 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles (United States)
Boafo_BouquetofWhiteRoses_12229_CourtesyoftheartistandRobertsProjects,LosAngeles,California;PhotoPaulSalveson
