Winner Takes All

Group Show; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York City

Curated by Amoako Boafo and Larry Ossei-Mensah

January 13 - February 26, 2022

Installation views at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York City

Winner Takes All

Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Winner Takes All, a group exhibition co-curated by visual artist Amoako Boafo and curator Larry Ossei-Mensah. Winner Takes All features new works by nine emerging painters whose practices contend with history and the complexity of identity through experimentation with figurative forms, including Sophia-Yemisi Adeyemo-Ross, Jessica Alazraki, Aplerh-Doku Borlabi, YoYo Lander, Anoushka Mirchandani, Zéh Palito, Adjei Tawiah, Nigatu Tsehay,and Didier Viodé. The exhibition is on view from January 13 to February 26, 2022, at the gallery’s 507 West 24th Street space. Long-time collaborators, Boafo and Ossei-Mensah recently presented Boafo’s first museum solo exhibition, Souls of Black Folks, on view at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, California, from October 22, 2021 through February 27, 2022.

Taking inspiration from the emotional impact and resiliency found in Carla Bruni’s rendition of the ABBA classic The Winner Takes It All, the exhibition subverts preconceived notions of how figurative painting, and the identity of the maker should be presented. The artists featured in the exhibition construct imaginary spaces within the pictorial planes of their artwork that liberate their diverse subjects from societal constraints of what can be a zero-sum game, especially for people of color and immigrants. It is through this liberation that the featured artists create expansive narratives that encompass a plurality of unique creative voices, including those that have historically been omitted from Western canonical discourse. 

Winner Takes All juxtaposes traditional paintings with mixed media works to represent a constellation of artistic voices that unfurl questions of selfhood, culture, and resilience. Through dynamic use of color, texture, line, medium, and form, the artists are unified in their desire to invite the viewer into a deep, but necessary, discourse related to our collective humanity and personhood. The artists explore what representation looks and feels like for their communities, ultimately begging the question how can we see each other and ourselves truthfully? 

Press Release