Amoako Boafo: Bring Home with Me
Roberts Projects, Los Angeles
January 17 – March 21, 2026
Images courtesy of Amoako Boafo and Roberts Projects
Walking into Amoako Boafo’s latest exhibition at Roberts Projects, “I Bring Home with Me,” is a bit like stepping into a memory palace that has been physically manifested in Mid-Wilshire. This is Boafo’s third solo outing with the gallery, and it finds the Ghanaian painter moving beyond the mere confines of the canvas to construct an environment—a 1:1 scale architectural recreation of his Accra studio—that houses his increasingly confident, fingertip-rendered portraits.
The installation, a collaboration with architect Glenn DeRoche, is more than a stage set. It’s an attempt to collapse the distance between the artist’s private site of creation and the public’s site of consumption. Entering through a threshold of vibrant monstera-patterned wallpaper, one finds a series of grid windows and room dividers that break up the traditional “white cube” monotony. It is a shrewd move; Boafo is an artist who understands that his work is as much about the space the Black body occupies as it is about the body itself.
The paintings remain the main event, and they are as tactile as ever. Boafo’s signature technique—applying oil paint directly with his fingers—gives his subjects a skin-like texture that a brush simply cannot replicate. The faces and limbs are built with a frantic, gestural energy that stands in sharp contrast to the flat, often highly patterned clothing his sitters wear. In works like Guipure Neck and Embroidered Bustier Dress (both 2025), Boafo leans into the decorative, using paper transfers and embroidery to create a tension between the fleshy, human reality of the figure and the artifice of fashion.
In his Self-Portrait with Ivy Background (2025), Amoako Boafo turns his tactile finger-painting technique upon himself, creating a physical record of his own presence that serves as the psychological anchor for the entire exhibition. By rendering his skin through a thick, rhythmic application of oil—a method that requires his direct, bare-handed touch—Boafo literally embeds himself into the canvas, mirroring the way the show’s architectural recreation of his Accra studio embeds his artistic process into the gallery space. The studio installation serves as a vessel for this self-representation; just as the architectural intervention collapses the distance between the viewer and his private creative sanctuary, the self-portrait invites the public into the most intimate aspect of his practice—the body of the artist himself. Within the context of the recreated studio, this work transforms from a standalone image into a site-specific declaration of belonging, reinforcing his mission to “document, celebrate and show new ways to approach Blackness” by placing his own image at the center of his “home” away from home.
There is a particular tenderness in how he handles his subjects—friends, family, and the occasional public figure. They are not icons or stereotypes; they are individuals in repose. “The primary idea of my practice is representation: documenting, celebrating, and showing new ways to approach Blackness,” Boafo has noted, and that mission is evident in the gaze of his sitters. They look back at the viewer with a level, unblinking assurance that doesn’t ask for permission to exist.
One of the more interesting additions is a folding wooden sculpture inspired by the Adinkra symbol nkyinkyim, which represents “twisting” or resilience. It’s a literalization of the adaptability Boafo has shown as his career has moved from Vienna to the global stage. By embedding his canvases into the “walls” of this makeshift studio, Boafo insists that his art cannot be separated from the domestic and communal context that birthed it. It is a lush, generous show that manages to feel both monumental and remarkably close to the vest.