NEW HAVEN, CONN.- A new exhibition at the Yale School of Art presents 12 works by London-based artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, a 2013 Turner Prize nominee best known for her figurative paintings of subjects constructed from memory and imagination.

On view April 8–May 30 at the 32 Edgewood Avenue Gallery in New Haven, “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Paintings” includes both large- and small-scale oils on canvas.

According to Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art and curator of the show “Yiadom-Boakye exhibits a clear comprehension of the history of European portraiture, yet employs paint as a medium through which new fictions are formed. Language influences her work strongly; she is a prolific writer of fiction, poetry, and essays. Her paintings depict figures that appear to be both carefully indeterminate and strangely familiar. At the same time, Yiadom-Boakye's ambiguous suggestion of setting and character invites the viewer’s imagination into the narrative, raising questions about how we interpret pictures themselves.”

Support for “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Paintings” has been provided by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. The 32 Edgewood Gallery is open to the public at no charge from Tuesday-Sunday, 12:00-6:00 P.M. (closed Mondays). An opening reception will take place at the gallery on Wednesday, April 23, at 5:30 P.M.

Yiadom-Boakye was born in London in 1977 to Ghanaian parents, both recent immigrants to the United Kingdom. She received her arts education from St. Martins School of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Art, and the Royal Academy Schools in London, from which she earned her M.F.A. in 2003.

Last year Yiadom-Boakye became the first black women ever to be nominated for the Turner Prize — one of Europe’s most coveted artist competitions — for her exhibition “Extracts and Verses” at Chisenhale Galleryin London. In 2012 she received the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize. Her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries around the world, including London, New York, Cape Town, Lyon, and Kiev. She is included in institutional collections such as the Tate, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Miami Art Museum, Florida; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina.