Inside Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo’s rise to art-world stardom

The artist is opening a major solo show at London’s Gagosian with an installation paying homage to his childhood home. It’s all part of his plan to nurture the next generation.

Amoako Boafo is in a buoyant mood. The 40-year-old Ghanaian painter is about to open his first London show, “I Do Not Come to You by Chance,” at a UK outpost of the American mega-gallery, Gagosian. It’s an exhibition showcasing a new body of figurative paintings –– joyful, empowering portrayals of Black men and women, wrought in his distinctive lionized style and pairing fingertip-painting with paper-transferred patterns and blocks of color. In one, a woman stands, hands on hips, draped in white lace; another depicts Boafa himself, on a bicycle, clad in gold chains and chintz. Eshewing a conventional “white-cube” gallery setting, sections of the space are covered in patterned wallpaper. More strikingly, one room is filled with a life-size recreation of the courtyard at Boafo’s childhood home in Ghana’s capital, Accra. “The idea of bringing the courtyard situation to London is me bringing home with me,” said Boafo over Zoom. “The courtyard is a space where I got to learn about almost everything: how to take a bath, how to take care of yourself,; how to sit quietly and listen, how to be disciplined.” Boafo’s rise to art-world stardom has been swift and significant. In 2018, as he was finishing a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria, American artist Kehinde Wiley found his art on Instagram. “He suggested my work to his galleries,” said Boafo, “which was when things started picking up.” By December 2021, one of his paintings, “Hands Up,” had sold for over 26 million Hong Kong dollars ($3.4 mililon) at Christie’s, setting an auction record for his work. Along the way, there was a residency at the Rubell Museum in Miami, owned by renowned collectors Don and Mera Rubell. Boafo signed with galleries in Los Angeles (Roberts Projects) and Chicago (Mariane Ibrahim). “Then Dior happened,” he said, referencing his collaboration with the French fashion house on its Spring-/Summer 2021 menswear collection, “and it didn’t slow down.” Three of Boafo’s paintings were even sent into space –– on exterior panels of a Blue Origin rocket. “I realized that maybe (my career is) never going to slow down –– and it never did.” Boafo was born in Accra in 1984; his father died when he was young and he was raised by his mother, who worked as home help, cooking and cleaning for different families. He developed a childhood love of art. “It was one of the ways that kids in the community got together: to draw,” he recalled. “I had always wanted to go to art school but, because of financial difficulties, I did not manage to.” Instead, Boafo ended up on the tennis court and played semi-professionally for several years, until a man Boafo’s mother worked for offered to pay his first tuition fees for Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra.