Wire report
Project a Black Planet review: spits out dreary academic theory where it should sing
Barbican, London This exhibition is so in love with the theoretical whimsy of utopian Panafrica that it loses superb artworks in an indigestible intellectual stew Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a painter with the imagination of a great novelist. Her contribution to the Barbican’s exhibition about Panafrica in art and culture deserves to win the Booker prize. She paints fictional people not portraits – a young woman reading avidly, a man standing alone in Pierrot-like fancy clothes, another wearing a cool green coat. You wonder if they are siblings, their scattered trajectories taking them through contemporary life as if this were a book by Zadie Smith or Jonathan Franzen. For this brand new group of paintings she has a white-walled room to herself. While her young moderns are captured in their ironies along the side walls, at the ends of the room, in uneasy relation to them, hang sombre pictur
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Barbican, London This exhibition is so in love with the theoretical whimsy of utopian Panafrica that it loses superb artworks in an indigestible intellectual stew Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a painter with the imagination of a great novelist. Her contribution to the Barbican’s exhibition about Panafrica in art and culture deserves to win the Booker prize. She paints fictional people not portraits – a young woman reading avidly, a man standing alone in Pierrot-like fancy clothes, another wearing a cool green coat. You wonder if they are siblings, their scattered trajectories taking them through contemporary life as if this were a book by Zadie Smith or Jonathan Franzen. For this brand new group of paintings she has a white-walled room to herself. While her young moderns are captured in their ironies along the side walls, at the ends of the room, in uneasy relation to them, hang sombre pictur
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According to The Guardian’s linked item, Project a Black Planet review: spits out dreary academic theory where it should sing, Barbican, London This exhibition is so in love with the theoretical whimsy of utopian Panafrica that it loses superb artworks in an indigestible intellectual stew Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a painter with the imagination of a great novelist. Her contribution to the Barbican’s exhibition about Panafrica in art and culture deserves to win the Booker prize. She paints fictional people not portraits – a young woman reading avidly, a man standing alone in Pierrot-like fancy clothes, another wearing a cool green coat. You wonder if they are siblings, their scattered trajectories taking them through contemporary life as if this were a book by Zadie Smith or Jonathan Franzen. For this brand new group of paintings she has a white-walled room to herself. While her young moderns are captured in their ironies along the side walls, at the ends of the room, in uneasy relation to them, hang sombre pictur
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The development sits in VINI’s Culture coverage for readers following arts, entertainment, fashion, film, music, celebrity, and the business of culture. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The linked item is dated 2026-06-09T23:02:03+00:00.
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Primary source: Project a Black Planet review: spits out dreary academic theory where it should sing via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.
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- Project a Black Planet review: spits out dreary academic theory where it should singThe Guardian - 2026-06-09T23:02:03+00:00
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