Presenting his first solo show in Italy was not something Amoako Boafo took lightly. It’s “meaningful because of the weight of [Italy’s] art historical legacy, especially in a place like Venice,” the Ghanaian artist, celebrated for his finger-painted portraits of stylish Black sitters, tells Vogue. “But for me, it was never about entering that history as an outsider looking in. It was about creating a conversation with it.”
Produced by Gagosian, “Amoako Boafo: It doesn’t have to always make sense” opened this May at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani during the 61st Venice Biennale and is on view through November 22. As a State museum mere minutes from San Marco, Palazzo Grimani is a beloved gem of Renaissance-era art, its transportive Tribuna—known as a “Chamber of Antiquities”—teeming with ancient sculptures. Elsewhere in the space, however, visitors will discover a series of monumental abstractions by Georg Baselitz, commissioned for the Sala del Portego’s 18th-century stucco-framed panels, where portraits of the Grimani family had hung until the end of the 19th century.
Boafo was a perfect match for the museum’s hallowed galleries. “I tried to work with the space respectfully, honoring the building’s legacy while also bringing my own history into it,” he says, adding that after visiting Venice as a student, returning to it as an exhibiting artist has been a “full-circle” moment.
In recent years, Boafo’s exhibitions have become increasingly immersive and personal. Last year, in a show for Gagosian’s London outpost, he worked with architect and designer Glenn DeRoche of DeRoche Projects to recreate the courtyard of the artist’s childhood home in Ghana (where he remembers learning how to paint) in the gallery. “We have a shared understanding of how space can shape both experience and community,” says Boafo, who previously worked with DeRoche on Dot Ateliers Ogbojo, the writers’ and curators’ residency program Boafo established in Ogbojo, Ghana, in 2024.
The central role community plays in Boafo’s practice comes through vividly in the exhibition, first in a video documenting the artist at home, in the studio, on the tennis court (he played tennis semi-professionally), and beyond. There are also works by Boafo’s friends and collaborators. A realistic resin-and-plaster-cast sculpture of a woman in an ivy-leaf-printed bra that Boafo made with his friend Stephen Allotey is juxtaposed with Boafo’s 2023 portrait of a woman sticking her tongue out. (Both the painting and the sculpture use a paper-transfer technique to add floral motifs to the figures’ clothes.) Featured on several walls are poems that the Ghanaian poet Raphael Worlasi Langani wrote for the exhibition; in one of the show’s final rooms, a poem titled Darkness is paired with Boafo’s All Black painting (2026), his first black-on-black portrait. “There’s a strong connection between visual language and poetry for me…My studio isn’t an isolated space, it’s full of conversations, exchange, and community,” Boafo says.
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