Presenting his first solo show in Italy was not something Amoako Boafo took lightly. It’s “meaningful because of the weight of [Italy’s] art historical legacy, especially in a place like Venice,” the Ghanaian artist, celebrated for his finger-painted portraits of stylish Black sitters, tells Vogue. “But for me, it was never about entering that history as an outsider looking in. It was about creating a conversation with it.”

Produced by Gagosian, “Amoako Boafo: It doesn’t have to always make sense” opened this May at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani during the 61st Venice Biennale and is on view through November 22. As a State museum mere minutes from San Marco, Palazzo Grimani is a beloved gem of Renaissance-era art, its transportive Tribuna—known as a “Chamber of Antiquities”—teeming with ancient sculptures. Elsewhere in the space, however, visitors will discover a series of monumental abstractions by Georg Baselitz, commissioned for the Sala del Portego’s 18th-century stucco-framed panels, where portraits of the Grimani family had hung until the end of the 19th century.

Boafo was a perfect match for the museum’s hallowed galleries. “I tried to work with the space respectfully, honoring the building’s legacy while also bringing my own history into it,” he says, adding that after visiting Venice as a student, returning to it as an exhibiting artist has been a “full-circle” moment.

In recent years, Boafo’s exhibitions have become increasingly immersive and personal. Last year, in a show for Gagosian’s London outpost, he worked with architect and designer Glenn DeRoche of DeRoche Projects to recreate the courtyard of the artist’s childhood home in Ghana (where he remembers learning how to paint) in the gallery. “We have a shared understanding of how space can shape both experience and community,” says Boafo, who previously worked with DeRoche on Dot Ateliers Ogbojo, the writers’ and curators’ residency program Boafo established in Ogbojo, Ghana, in 2024.

The central role community plays in Boafo’s practice comes through vividly in the exhibition, first in a video documenting the artist at home, in the studio, on the tennis court (he played tennis semi-professionally), and beyond. There are also works by Boafo’s friends and collaborators. A realistic resin-and-plaster-cast sculpture of a woman in an ivy-leaf-printed bra that Boafo made with his friend Stephen Allotey is juxtaposed with Boafo’s 2023 portrait of a woman sticking her tongue out. (Both the painting and the sculpture use a paper-transfer technique to add floral motifs to the figures’ clothes.) Featured on several walls are poems that the Ghanaian poet Raphael Worlasi Langani wrote for the exhibition; in one of the show’s final rooms, a poem titled Darkness is paired with Boafo’s All Black painting (2026), his first black-on-black portrait. “There’s a strong connection between visual language and poetry for me…My studio isn’t an isolated space, it’s full of conversations, exchange, and community,” Boafo says.

That sense of community is reflected in the portraits themselves, particularly in a gallery with what Boafo calls the “heroine wall,” made up of 11 primarily bust-length portraits of women against a marigold-hued backdrop. Representing the friends, family, and people he admires, the portraits include Koyo Kouoh, the late executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, who was also the 2026 Venice Biennale’s artistic director. The Cameroonian-Swiss curator made history as the first African woman selected to curate the Biennale before her death last year.

The wall represents another first for Boafo: never before has the artist incorporated embroidery techniques into his paintings. In White Swimsuit (2026), a brilliant showcase of texture, the wispy-lashed figure looks back, the threads of her halter-top nearly blending into the background. Later in the exhibition, Boafo’s embroidery shows up again—more plainly this time—in Two Faces (2021–25), in which a painted figure clutches an almost entirely embroidered child. While Boafo has made a name for himself by finger-painting his sitters’ skin while he renders their backgrounds and clothing in more fluid brushstrokes, here we see Boafo depict the younger figure’s complexion in a patchwork of brown threads. “I wanted certain elements to have a stronger physical presence, not just to be represented visually, but to carry their own materiality,” he explains. “Textiles already play an important role in how I think about identity, presence, and character, so bringing embroidery into the work felt like a natural extension of that.”

Boafo calls Venetian lace another “major influence” on the show, both in the works themselves and the exhibition design. “Back home, if someone is marking an occasion that has an element of luxury, you think of lace,” he says. “It carries a certain presence and respect, regardless of whether it’s expensive or simple.” The show opens with the over-six-foot-tall Mozzarella White Lace Top (2026), whose deep maroon background is echoed in the gallery’s wallpaper. The paper features a damask pattern, which the introductory text describes as being “historically used for liturgical and private furnishings, as well as for the luxurious attire of the Venetian nobility.” Later in the exhibition, two elegant portraits of women in off-the-shoulder dresses—in turquoise and red lace respectively—hang side by side.

The exhibition’s pacing—one to two paintings per room, with the exception of the heroine wall—allows for intimate encounters, both with Boafo’s commanding portraits and the palazzo’s historical architecture. Placed within the context of terrazzo floors and beamed ceilings, the works represent a modern intervention without feeling out of place. “Venetian portraiture has historically constructed ideas of prestige, beauty, status, and power. What interested me was what happens when my subjects enter that tradition, and that they are not intimidated by it. They are not simply guests, they are affirming their own identities,” Boafo says. “Placing Black portraiture in a place like Palazzo Grimani is a way to bridge classical tradition and contemporary Black experience. For me, painting is essentially about documenting and celebrating Blackness. I want the figures in my paintings to be strong and unapologetic.”