At Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, the Ghanaian artist invites viewers into a space of memory, kinship and self-making, where portraiture becomes both mirror and threshold.
Amoako Boafo, Amidst Tulips, 2025. Oil and paper transfer on canvas, 207 x 141.3cm. © Amoako Boafo. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian
Amoako Boafo’s ‘I Do Not Come to You by Chance’ at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London welcomes freedom of movement as much as it persuades freedom in reflection. Observers become guests who can come and go as they please, they are, effectively, infiltrators as much as they are participators. Discerningly, Boafo bares himself to their scrutiny; he welcomes them at his threshold, beckoning them inside to see what he’s built for his introductory solo presentation in the United Kingdom. It’s also a reconciliation of previous creative endeavors. This is particularly evident in his renewed collaboration with architect and designer Glenn DeRoche (DeRoche Projects), the two having previously realised dot.ateliers| Ogbojo, the writer’s and curator’s residential programme, Boafo introduced in Ogbojo, Ghana, in 2024. “I make paintings that allow me to celebrate where I come from and what I aspire to be”, he elaborates, “while sharing unique perspectives and understanding.” The artist was born in Accra (1984), where he continues to live and work, and it was here that he graduated from the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in 2008, whilst being the recipient of the college’s award for best portrait artist.
There is undoubtedly an insatiable hunger to both understand and be understood, which permeates; ’I Do Not Come to You by Chance.’ Boafo satiates it through portraiture works which applaud the Black figure in a psych of bona fide jubilation. Simultaneously, they clap back at the erroneous depiction of cliches through images that hoist up their subjects. Complicating the notion of what it is to see and what it is to be seen, further still, the artist also uses his paintings as conduits to facilitate a reflection of the Western understanding of present Africa and its diaspora, traversing kinship, community and self-governance. They become autonomous from any interruption, a consequence of their being envisaged by Boafo then conceived through him. Both are courtesy of his decision to paint the faces and figures of his subjects by using his fingertips. A multipurpose approach to each concept, along with the components that influence its realisation, has long been a part of Boafo’s process.
Amoako Boafo, Shoulder Stand, 2023. Oil and paper transfer on canvas, 160 x 182.4cm. © Amoako Boafo. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian
In 2013, the artist moved to Vienna, where he worked alongside artist and curator Sunanda Mesquita to introduce WE DEY, a centre for exhibitions, workshops and community initiatives that campaigned for artists of colour and LGBTQ+ narratives. Coming across the disempowerment of Black individuals in Austria, Boafo chose to concentrate on portraits of Black subjects who continued to be sidelined in global contemporary art. He is influenced by the expressionist portraiture approaches belonging to Vienna Secession artists, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, as well as more current artists such as Jordan Casteel, Maria Lassnig, Kerry James Marshall and Kehinde Wiley. Significantly, Boafo’s self-portraits are autobiographical probes of his corporal self, articulations of vulnerability, and creativity that confront stereotypical narratives of masculinity. Other works depict men, women and couples with subjects chosen from close acquaintances and others he admires. They reflect individuality and a spirited presence, with the majority of the figures locking gazes with the observer and declaring a powerful awareness of self.
‘I Do Not Come to You by Chance’ opens up across Gagosian’s three rooms. Throughout, Boafo persistently narrates his family’s story and local Ghanaian legacy, coalescing autobiographical influences. Observers first cross paths with a wallpapered opening before being guided into an expansive effigy of the courtyard that belongs to the artist’s childhood home in Ghana. Eventually, these guests find themselves in the concluding room, greeted by the artist’s debut two-sided and freely standing painting. Serving as custodians to this domain are the two gargantuan female figures who have been engulfed within a screen that’s further encompassed by a sculptural wooden perimeter. The folding panels reinterpret nkyinkyim, which is an Adinkra emblem symbolising “twisting.” At first impression, such a piece appears paradoxical to the simplicity of the setting it rests within. Yet somehow, it fits perfectly with the discovery process this exhibition sets itself on.
Amoako Boafo, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, 2025, installation view. Artwork © Amoako Boafo. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy Gagosian
As for the courtyard intervention, it transforms the utilitarian atmosphere of the space into a reflection of the artist himself. Especially as it gestures to Boafo’s foremost artistic experiences of communal environments as havens of exchangeable artistry. Comparable to shared studios where families watched one another and local artists, including Kwesi Botchway, Eric Adjei Tawiah, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe and Aplerh-Doku Borlabi, regularly gathered to distribute materials and ingenuity. The courtyard symbolises an environment of enlightenment, open to all, yet penetrated by few. In this setting, Boafo realised the influence of the communal space, something which also later supported in shaping the bedrock of the artist’s practice. Here, perhaps, lies the greatest hint that this exhibition isn’t so much about building as it is about rebuilding—fortifying that which has stood and continues to stand within the broader dialogues that are perpetuated around space and the Black individual’s inhabitation of it. Within Boafo’s work, these discourses around spatial occupation exist once again, they are merely within another form.
Multitudes of the pieces on display mirror conceptualisations around tranquillity and playfulness; amidst them is one of Boafo’s more intimidatingly sized self-portraits so far, Self-Portrait with Cacti (2024). Impressively spanning more than four meters (13 feet) in length, it frames the artist in a second of calm, sprawled in bed and enveloped by a luscious plethora of flora and fauna. Another piece, Black Cycle (2025), depicts the artist riding a bike whilst the fabric of his garments imitates the exhibition’s wallpapered beginning. Ultimately, it only proves that for every ending in Boafo’s work, there’s continuously an opportunity to go back and start again.
Amoako Boafo, Black Cycle, 2025. Oil and paper transfer on canvas, 209 x 220cm. © Amoako Boafo. Photo: Joe Humphrys. Courtesy Gagosian
Boafo was recognised with the Walter Koschatzky Kunstpreis in 2017 and the STRABAG Art Award International in 2019. He also concluded his MFA at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien in that time. Within the same year, he was the residential artist at the Rubell Museum, Miami, with the works realised during his residency comprising the museum’s inaugural solo-artist exhibition, ‘Soul of Black Folks’, a mobile artistic chorus of over thirty portrait paintings was arranged in 2021-22 by the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco.
In 2021, the artist worked alongside Kim Jones on Dior’s Spring/Summer 2021 menswear presentation, by incorporating the textures and patterns of his portraits. The designs were entirely advertised on Black models. In August of that year, he also contributed three paintings to the parachute panels of a Blue Origin rocket that was propelled into space and returned to Earth. The introductory project in Uplift Aerospace’s Art × Space program, Suborbital Triptych included a self-portrait, a painting of Boafo’s mother, and a painting of the mother of fellow artist Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe.
Sabrina Roman uses exhibition reviews as a tool for critical reflection. She has contributed reviews, critical essays, and interviews to publications including Émergent, Whitehot Magazine, Trebuchet, Art Observed, and ART AFRICA. Her writing explores themes of desire, identity, commodification, and cultural production. She is pursuing postgraduate studies in English Literature at Queen Mary University of London, focusing on critical discourse and contemporary culture.
