Tag: Amoako Boafo

Amoako Boafo (b. 1984, Accra, Ghana) creates luminous, large-scale portraits that centre Black presence with confidence, intimacy and painterly force. Working primarily with his fingers rather than brushes, he builds skin through thick, gestural layers of paint, allowing touch itself to become a visible, expressive mark. His figures meet the viewer directly, framed against vibrant patterned backdrops that amplify both individuality and cultural specificity.

Boafo’s practice reclaims portraiture as a site of agency and self-definition. Friends, lovers and sitters are depicted with dignity and immediacy, their bodies relaxed yet assured. The tactile surfaces of his paintings resist the smoothness of photographic representation, asserting the materiality of paint as a form of presence and care.

Through this physical, direct approach, Boafo challenges historical traditions that marginalised Black subjects, offering instead images grounded in mutual recognition and lived experience. His work is not about spectacle, but about visibility—about the power of being seen on one’s own terms, with complexity, warmth and unapologetic clarity.