Painted in 2011, just two years before Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's nomination for the Turner Prize, Casework highlights the artist’s masterful approach to portraiture. By placing her subjects in dark, nondescript spaces, Yiadom-Boakye centers the focus on the painting’s highest point of contrast: where the eyes of the subject meet the viewers’. The themes of looking and watching are central to the artist’s work and contribute to her status as a forerunner in contemporary portraiture.
The figure in Casework is depicted straight-on, gracefully accepting the gaze of the viewer, and is consumed by a gestural black backdrop. “Black women watching, without necessarily intervening, possibly out of detachment, possibly with judgment—keeping their own counsel, as is their right.” Yiadom-Boakye comments, “to be all-seeing and all-knowing and yet elsewhere altogether. Much like the divine.”1 By distilling images found in publications and her own imagination, Yiadom-Boakye portrays fictitious subjects, amplified by the dream-like quality of anonymous settings. However, there is an undeniable nostalgia in the artist’s work, as if the figure is a familiar face.
"Maybe I think more about black thought than black bodies. When people ask about the aspect of race in the work, they are looking for very simple or easy answers. Part of it is when you think other people are so different than yourself, you imagine that their thoughts aren’t the same. When I think about thought, I think about how much there is that is common."
—Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
As the first Black woman to have been nominated for the Turner prize and to have the solo exhibition at the Tate Modern, Yiadom-Boakye has solidified her standing as one of the most important creators today. Often stylistically compared to Caspar David Friedrich and other Romantic painters, Yiadom-Boakye ultimately centers the individual in her work. Her ability to portray figures with passion and familiarity recalls the emotion and imagination of Romanticism. However, Yiadom-Boakye's removal of any narrative between the character and their surroundings reveals how distinct her body of work is from that of her predecessors. The subtle aura surrounding the figure in Casework adds to the painting’s divine quality, walking the line between surreal and real.
