home grown

dec 17 to 24 2023

The exhibition serves as a reflection on Boafo’s practice and his associations with home, community and an expansive art history with work from recent years.. With representations of key elements of his work - such as representations of the Black figure, pattern transfer, investigations into interior scenes and deeply textured and uniques renderings of the skin, the show presents an abridged history of Boafo’s artistic interests and signature style, presented for the first time in his home of Accra. The exhibition focuses on works previously unseen from Boafo’s personal archive. Thus, with this exhibition, Boafo gifts the legacy of this pioneering artist to the community in Ghana whilst also allowing further curiosity into the references and ideas central to his practice.

The work in the exhibition explores the artist's investigations into the interior lives of Blackness multifaceted. Intersecting, deftly and at once, between joy, freedom and boundless resistance by existence – the show delves deep into Amoako’s understanding of the representation of the Black body, the resonance of colouration and textural dialogue within the skin, as well as explorations of colour, negative space, absence and presence. White becomes a connector – an empty puzzle piece when transposed onto Black skin, creating disappearing acts with old chairs, and redacting swim shorts. Presence becomes disrupted, as the viewer negotiates the understanding of the permanence of communities within history. What is left unsaid, is often the most powerful. Boafo encourages a nuanced incompleteness.

- Curated by Aindrea Emelife