The Shadow of Imana

A monumental vision spanning almost two metres in width, The Shadow of Imana is a powerful early example of Amoako Boafo’s celebrated self-portraits. Rendered in oil and graphite across four sheets of paper, it is a companion to the 2018 work Yellow Blanket, in which the artist similarly depicts himself reading in sensuous, naked repose. Haptic swirls of marbled paint conjure the textures of flesh, offering an early large-scale instance of Boafo’s characteristic finger-painting technique. Flashes of red, orange, green and blue enliven his lithe, reclining form; light dances behind his eyes, and ripples through the strands of his hair. While the work witnesses Boafo’s distinctive dialogue with the work of artists such as Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, it also demonstrates his deep engagement with African literature and history. The book depicted in the painting is The Shadow of Imana—Travels in the Heart of Rwanda by the Ivorian writer Véronique Tadjo: an account of her journey to Rwanda, and her exploration of the country’s devastating 1994 genocide. Here, it becomes a prop in Boafo’s meditation on identity, bringing stories from Africa’s past into dialogue with European art history.

Born in Accra, Ghana—where he is currently building a pioneering artists’ residence and gallery—Boafo studied at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design. In 2014 he moved to Vienna, the former hometown of both Schiele and Klimt, to complete his MFA at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. Though deeply inspired by the languages of European Modernism, Boafo placed the representation of Black subjects at the heart of his agenda, committing himself to ‘documenting, celebrating and showing new was to approach Blackness’ (A. Boafo, quoted in V. L. Valentine, ‘Amoako Boafo is Latest Young Black Artist to Make Major Auction Debut’, Culture Type, 11 February 2020). Early on in his career, the artist rejected criticism that painting his own likeness would hinder his chances of success. ‘No,’ he recalls exclaiming. ‘I’m painting myself, and it’s important that I paint myself. I don’t see why I, as a black person, am not good enough to be shown in a gallery’. Shortly afterwards, he explains, ‘I saw Schiele’s self-portrait, and it actually confirmed for me that I should keep painting what I was painting’ (A. Boafo, quoted in C. Manning, ‘Meet Amoako Boafo, the rising artist making his Art Basel debut’, Fashion Week Daily, 5 December 2019).

References to reading recur throughout Boafo’s oeuvre, often shining a light on writers of African heritage or themes relating to colonisation, politics and the diaspora. Another of Tadjo’s books—her 1992 novel As the Crow Flies—features elsewhere in his practice; others include Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013) and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961). The Shadow of Imana, published in 1998, documents Tadjo’s attempts to understand the horrors that emerged from Rwanda during the country’s Civil War, probing the darkest depths of humanity’s potential for destruction. The image on the front cover was taken by the photographer and reporter Catherine Millet, known for her work in Africa; it comes from a series entitled ‘Maggy’, focusing on the care of orphans in Burundi in the aftermath of the conflict. In the present work, Boafo places particular emphasis on the yellow of the left-hand child’s clothing. The colour itself—reminiscent of Klimt—is something of a touchstone for the artist: in Yellow Blanket, it is transplanted from the book cover to the cover of his own bed. Life, literature, art and history are interwoven in the process, interrogating the complex mechanisms through which our identities are shaped.