“I draw strength and inspiration from the community. I like very much people that create space for other people to exist and Thelma happens to be one of them.”
A captivating and vibrant portrait of an equally fascinating individual within the international art world, Thelma in Colored Blazer by Amoako Boafo from 2018 exemplifies the artist’s ability to encapsulate his subject’s grandeur through his innovative practice. Staring directly at the viewer with a commanding presence, the chief curator and director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Thelma Golden is pictured with a colorful blazer, most probably designed by her husband and elite fashion designer Duro Olowu. Executed in 2018, the present work directly precedes the artist's swift international recognition, marking an important and pivotal moment in his career. Boafo’s fascination with Golden and her various triumphs for the Black community within the art world and beyond serves as inspiration for the present work, which is rendered with astounding technique and use of color.
In Thelma in Colored Blazer, the pigment forming the subject’s face and neck has been applied with the artist’s fingers; an atypical process of mark-making that produces a particularly thick, expressive surface. Boafo’s treatment of skin is striking; by adding movement through the curvilinear streaks of Golden’s face, her rich complexion is magnified by way of vibrant hues and rich contours that seem to dissolve into abstraction. Beautifully contrasting with the bright colors of her blazer, the highly layered, varied strokes of pigment bestow a certain fluidity to the composition which imparts a mesmerizingly tonal sense of movement: “The technique not only belies the literalness of the designation ‘black’ but also makes the figures pulse with energy. Despite their static poses, they seem ever shifting and unfixed” (S. Mizota, ‘In Amoako Boafo’s portraits, every brushstroke of every black face matters’, Los Angeles Times, 20 February 2019, online). Through Boafo's intricate treatment of his medium, he also invites the viewer to contemplate the complexities of the Black experience. Born in Accra, Ghana, Boafo utilizes his practice to explore his own diasporic experience and the quest for his identity and sense of belonging. Ultimately, through the depiction of such an accomplished and distinguished individual like Thelma Golden, Boafo celebrates Blackness while also showcasing his innate technical skill as a powerful portrait painter.
“I have always been interested in facial expressions… That’s one reason I like portraits so much. And then there is a certain gap: When you go to a museum or a big gallery all you see are white figures. You don’t see the kind of faces I paint there. I want to do my own small bit to close that gap… that is my main goal: To paint a different kind of portrait.”
Boafo’s work references, and indeed challenges, the Western art historical canon. His work in the genre of portraiture is deeply rooted in a recognition of the glaring absence of black figures throughout the history of art. At the same time, Boafo looks to the work of fellow artists of the African diaspora, who are also grappling with the issue of race through their respective practices, among them Kerry James Marshall, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Henry Taylor and Kehinde Wiley. In taking up the traditional genre of portraiture of Western art through his striking painterly aesthetic, Boafo celebrates blackness and the life and accomplishments of Thelma Golden while challenging the viewer to consider racial inequality across all spheres, including within art history.