White on White, 2019, oil on paper, 39 3/8 x 31 1⁄2 in.
This fall and winter, more than 30 arresting portraits will fill the Denver Art Museum’s Gallagher Family Gallery as the traveling exhibition Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks makes a stop in the Mile High City. On view October 8 through February 19, the show features the work of Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo, who captures scenes of Black life with vibrant color and thick, often finger-painted gestures.
In Ghana, Boafo was introduced to the research of civil rights activist, sociologist and Pan-Africanist W.E.B. Du Bois, who used the phrase “double consciousness” to explain the experience of considering oneself from a personal perspective and from a white person’s point of view.
With their penetrating gazes, Boafo’s portrait subjects invite visitors to challenge that “othered” perspective and, says Christoph Heinrich, the museum’s director, to “reflect on how our viewpoints influence the way we see the people around us.”
