Artist Amoako Boafo helped to create the Dior collection

Contemporary African artist draws with fingers!

The creative director of the Dior men’s line, Kim Jones, created the Spring / Summer 2021 collection with Amoako Boafo. The starting point for this collaboration was one of Boafo’s paintings. It depicts a young man in a green beret and a T-shirt decorated with an ivy print – an iconic symbol of Dior.

It is worth noting that the coincidences do not end there. The picture itself is in tune with the images that we saw in the pre-fall 2020 collection: the same berets famously shifted to one side, bright colors, floral ornaments, a combination of textures. The Dior show was held at the same time as the Art Basel Miami exhibition, at which Jones met Boafo.

An artist from Ghana has become a sensation in the modern art world. His paintings at the Miami Art Basel – 2019 were sold out in the first hour of the preview. And the prices of the works were several times higher than the estimate.

Amoako is known for portraits of his friends and relatives, painted in an expressionistic manner. He uses oil, acrylic, and pastel, mixing paints with his fingers on top of the finished drawing. Occasionally he uses collage techniques.

Creating portraits, the artist uses not only traditional tools like brushes but also fingertips. He paints the base of his canvas using brushes, and then he paints oil, acrylic, or pastel with his fingers to create shapes. The artist says that by working in this way, he loses control of the process, and that is exactly what he likes.

In his works, Amoako explores black culture. The Black Diaspora series is dedicated to the life of the African diaspora in America and around the world, reflecting the discrimination they face. African culture is close to Kim Jones.

Kim Jones, whose childhood was spent in Ethiopia, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana, has already turned to African craftsmanship and art in the past, however, in the film, the designer notes that he always wanted to work with artists.

In the Dior collection, his drawings appeared as prints on sweaters and T-shirts. The color palette of clothes repeats the bright shades of the paintings: yellow, pink, ultramarine blue.