This viewing room presents Kingfisher (2011), a striking early painting by the British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977). One of the most celebrated figurative painters of her generation, the recipient of a Carnegie Prize in 2018 and a Turner Prize nominee, Yiadom-Boakye’s work was the subject of a widely acclaimed solo exhibition at Tate Britain in 2020, which returns to the museum this November.
Drawing from a variety of source material, including allusions to European art history and found images, Yiadom-Boakye creates portraits based on her own imagination. Set in abstract settings deliberately removed from markers of place or time, the artist’s enigmatic, fictional sitters nonetheless project the potency of real souls.
