Lynette Yiadom-Boakye @ The Fitzwilliam Museum

A new case display in the Dutch Gallery presents a selection from new acquisition, First Flight (2015), a set of etchings by British figurative artist, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

The Black, male heads set against blank backgrounds are not portraits but fictional composites based on collections of found images, such as photographs, and the artist’s own memories and imagination.

The questions of representation and memorialisation raised by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work are brought into focus by placing it in dialogue with examples of portraiture, by Anthony van Dyck and Rembrandt van Rijn, from the Museum’s print collection.  The display encourages us to ask, “what is history?”; “who should be remembered and how?”