Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

One of the things I love most about art is that we each bring ourselves to looking. The same painting can hold entirely different meanings depending on who is standing in front of it.

That thought came to me while visiting Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Many a Moonlit Caveat at Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street, on view through July 31. In one painting, a figure balances upside down with a bird perched delicately on their feet. I immediately saw a shoulder stand, the yoga pose often practiced near the end of a vinyasa sequence. The bird transformed the pose into something else entirely: a moment of trust, stillness, and balance.

Perhaps someone else will see something entirely different. That is one of the gifts of Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings. Her figures are imagined rather than portraits of specific people, leaving space for each of us to enter with our own experiences and associations.

Looking at this painting, I wasn’t thinking about art history or symbolism. I was thinking about my own yoga practice and how, after movement and effort, there is often a moment of complete quiet. Somehow, the bird made that feeling visible.

It was a beautiful reminder that seeing is never passive. Every work of art becomes a collaboration between the artist and the person looking.