The present work titled Red Stripes (2019) typifies Amoako Boafo’s empathetic, exquisitely textured portraits celebrating Black bodies and Black joy. His work significantly engages in reconfiguring the canon of Western art and the very function of portraiture through the placement of Black people at the forefront of a genre they have historically been omitted from. As it was consolidated in the Italian Renaissance, portraiture was a means to present a highly elaborated public persona. While this changed with innovations introduced by artists such as Francisco de Goya and his interest in translating the subjective sensibility of the sitter, Boafo here presents a more contemporary iteration. His portraits are characterized by a neutral monochrome background before which the brightly patterned, sometimes collaged clothes of the sitter stand out, thus endowing the work with the subject’s personality and providing them with agency, underscored by their direct gaze.

Boafo graduated from the Ghanatta College of Art in 2008 where he notably received the Best Portrait Painter of the Year award. In 2014, he moved to Vienna and attended the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. Inspired by the work of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, it was then that Boafo developed his signature method of using his fingers to render Black skin and flesh, resulting in an inimitable fusion of his perspective as a Black artist with Viennese painting. Shortly thereafter, he won the 2017 Walter Koschazky Art Award for an artist under 35. Upon being discovered by Kehinde Wiley on Instagram, the artist experienced a meteoric rise in early 2019, becoming a global phenomenon in the art world.

When viewing Boafo’s work and his technique of rendering the skin, particularly up close, there is an allusion to touch and physicality, resulting in a visceral and bodily reaction on the part of the viewer. Furthermore, when looking closely at the flesh of the subject depicted in Red Stripes, the rich texture and multiplicity of colors with which he renders it can be interpreted as analogous to the complex richness of Black life and culture. On his atypical method, Boafo explains: “This lack of instrumental barrier sets me free and diffuses a barrier between myself and the subject. I am able to connect with the subject in a more intimate way, which allows me to create an expressive skin tone. I don’t think this type of stroke can be achieved by a brush.” This intimacy with the subject extends to the experience of the viewer, resulting in what can be termed an encounter of sorts.