Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in 1977 in London, where she is currently based. She attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools.Yiadom-Boakye has had several solo museum shows, most recently at the Serpentine Gallery in June 2015, the Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012) and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2011).  Her work has appeared in many group exhibitions, such as the current Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, and the possible; the Ungovernables: 2012 New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York (2012); the 11th Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France (2012); and the Encyclopedic Palace, at the 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2013). Yiadom-Boakye will be included in the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA): A Story Within a Story, at the Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden from September 12 - November 22, 2015.

She is included in many institutional collections including the Tate Collection, London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Miami Art Museum, Florida, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, the Arts Council Collection, London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Yiadom-Boakye was the 2012 recipient of the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize, which was accompanied by a solo exhibition of her work, and in 2013 was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.