Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Painterly Matterings of Ordinary Black Life | Tate Etc.

Published in Tate Etc. in conjunction with Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's retrospective at the Tate Britain, this feature essay engages the artist's paintings from multiple disciplinary, geographic and historical angles. Moving beyond representationalist paradigms, the essay weaves together anti-colonial Marxist critiques of modernism; black feminist theorising on interiority, "mattering," and haptic visuality; disidentificatory readings of Michael Fried's theory of absorption; and reflections on the queerness of the Harlem Renaissance. 

The online version of this essay is an extended version of the printed version, inclusive of footnotes.

Cover image: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, The Ventricular, 2018, Oil paint on linen © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, courtesy the artist, Corvi-Mora, London and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York