The Second Coming of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
It’s the second coming of British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the Tate Britain. Her 2020 show “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in League With the Night” was disrupted by COVID-19 when it debuted in December 2020 as the museum shut its doors.
“It’s never been done before, it’s a total first for us,” says Andrea Schlieker, director of exhibitions and displays at Tate Britain, who is getting Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings out of crates again and installing them in the same precision for the Nov. 24 run.
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It’s déjà vu mixed with “Groundhog Day.” “But it’s also this incredible joy of seeing old friends again that you haven’t seen in a while and never managed to spend the amount of time with them as you wanted,” says Schlieker, who is determined to do the same for any artist.
Yiadom-Boakye’s initial short run exhibition was met with incredible feedback all around, from regular museum visitors to newcomers and even the press, making the show a critical success.
This is Yiadom-Boakye’s first major survey in the U.K. and Schlieker wanted to give the public a chance to see how her work has developed over the span of 20 years.
“When you think of British art as a whole, you think of Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney and John Singer Sargent, all of these amazing artists are proponents of portraiture and in a way Lynette continues that trajectory, but totally reinvents it,” Schlieker adds.
The art of portraiture is on the horizon again and that temperature can be measured by the 2022 Frieze in London, where figurative paintings were the real concentration.
“A lot of other painters have been looking at Lynette as a kind of leader in her field and as somebody who is much admired, so I think we will see a lot more paintings to come,” Schlieker says.
Schlieker and her team have managed to bring back around 70 pieces of work from private lenders with the exception of four paintings, but they’re making up for it with Yiadom-Boakye’s help, who has created two new creations to go with two other archival pieces.
One of the new pieces is a vibrant red that will sit in a room accompanied by white, gray and black paintings. It serves as the exception — which best sums up Yiadom-Boakye’s artistic expression.
All her work follows a uniform of portraiture depicting Black lives in motion, be it men standing by a barre; women dancing on a plain background, or the subject posing for the artist — however, she never puts the same sex on the same canvas with the exception of “Diplomacy II” and “Diplomacy III,” which focus on the the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in both the U.S. and throughout Africa
And there’s always an anomaly when her work is presented in a larger context.
Yiadom-Boakye’s art is all about mood — it’s a complete ripping of the detailed narrative often found in portraiture. She strips away the atmosphere and sartorial codes to play with the genre; in some cases she breaks the fourth wall, but the audience still remains an outsider looking in.
The museum since the pandemic has tried to change its infrastructure when it comes to the exhibitions it hosts.
“We want to reflect the diversity of London in our audience and program. We have definitely created a much more diverse program and collection over the last few years,” says Schlieker, explaining that the museum has changed its strategy, which has been a success in attracting new visitors.
“One of the things people assume about my stance is that I don’t want to talk about race and that somehow this isn’t political. It’s never been that. I just don’t like being told who I am, how I should speak, what to do and how to do it. I’ve never needed telling,” Yiadom-Boakye says.
The museum, like the artist, is rebelling against its traditional image where it is perceived to be the older and more mature sibling of the Tate Modern.
Tate Britain has hosted the ongoing exhibition “Art Now” since the 1990s to showcase new work by emerging artists. Artist duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ fresco paintings are currently on display until May 7.
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