Dan Vo and Elvira Dyangani-Ose discuss First Flight (2015), a set of etchings by British figurative artist, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977), acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2020.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work challenges the restrictive, aggrandizing themes of the European portrait tradition by destabilising sitters’ identities and removing indications of place and time. Instead, her enigmatic, invented heads make room for multiple interpretations and projections.
Dan and Elvira discuss questions of representation and agency that are raised by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work, particularly when placed it in dialogue with examples of portraiture, by Anthony van Dyck and Rembrandt van Rijn, from the Fitzwilliam Museum’s remarkable print collection.
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