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

Published in Tate Etc. in conjunction with 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 decolonial 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