Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has devoted her career to painting fictional black characters, explaining that they are ‘composites constructed from found images, life drawings and my imagination.’ They are painted in a muted palette of blacks, browns and greys, with the occasional flash of brightness, and seem to exist outside of a specific time and place.

But each has a story to tell. ‘Yiadom-Boakye’s figures push themselves into the imagination, as literary characters do,’ Zadie Smith wrote in 2017.

In Willow Strip, two women in emerald green dresses dance, their right arms interlaced. They gaze at each other admiringly: why are they celebrating? Yiadom-Boakye leaves us to decide.