Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria) is a visual artist and columnist based in New York. She is best known for her eclectic, multimedia drawings made with pen ink, pencil, charcoal and pastel, often presented in large scale series, or “chapters.” Since 2011, themes in her work have explored the malleability of meaning, memory, and power through portraiture and visual story-telling.

She has participated in solo and group exhibitions at national and international institutions, including the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, Barbican Centre, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Whitney Museum of American Art, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the Menil Collection, as well as the 12th Manifesta Biennial in Palermo, Italy.

Ojih Odutola earned her BA from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In 2016, she undertook a residency at Headlands Center for the Arts; she was the Lida A. Orzeck ‘68 Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Barnard College from 2017—2018; and in 2019, inducted into the National Academy of Design.

Public collections of her artworks are held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Harvard Art Museums, Massachusetts; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, among others.

︎︎︎ PDF of CV
︎︎︎ Instagram

Press

The Washington Post, ^{by Vanessa H. Larson}
Washington City Paper, ^{by Shantay Robinson}
The New York Times Style Magazine, ^{by Lovia Gyarkye}
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
The White Review, ^{by Orit Gat}
ArtReview, ^{by Rahel Aima} 
The Brooklyn Rail, ^{by Amber Jamilla Musser}
The New York Times, ^{by Jason Farago}
The Art Newspaper, ^{by Louisa Buck}
CNN Style, ^{by Jaqui Palumbo}
Artforum, ^{by Cassie Packard}
Granta, ^{by Yaa Gyasi}
iNews, ^{by Hettie Judah}
The Quietus, ^{by Amah-Rose Abrams}
Artforum, ^{by Jo Baer}
Flash Art, ^{by Kareem Reid}
Frieze, ^{by Rianna Jade Parker}
HyperAllergic, ^{by Naomi Polonsky}
The New Yorker, ^{by Zadie Smith}
Apollo Magazine, ^{by Samuel Reilly}
Conversation with Erin J. Gilbert, ^{Nothing Concrete}
Artsy, ^{by Gabrielle Bruney} 
Great Women Artists with Katy Hessel
Talk Art with Russell Tovey & Robert Diament 
WePresent, ^{by Allyssia Alleyne}

On View

Apr — Aug 2022
Living Histories,
Frick Madison, New York

30 Jan 30 — 13 Feb 2022
Artists Inspired by Music: Interscope Reimagined,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California

19 Nov 2021 — 3 Apr 2022 
Toyin Ojih Odutola: A Countervailing Theory,
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,
Washington, DC

7 Nov 2021 — 17 Apr 2022
Black American Portraits,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California

24 Oct 2021 — 17 Jan 2022
Afro-Atlantic Histories
Museum of Fine Art Houston, Texas

11 Jun — 31 Dec 2021
PORTALS, Organized by NEON,
Hellenic Parliament Library & Printing House,
Athens, Greece

Galleries

Please refer all inquiries, be they acquisition(s), artwork loan(s), press, image licensing, events, &c, to either:


Jack Shainman ^{New York}    

Corvi-Mora ^London

2008

A Colonized Mind

Inspired by the writings of Franz Fanon, Audre Lorde, Edward Said, and in particular James Baldwin’s statement:

“The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”

Exploring the limitations of visual language one can utlize to express their reality when the tools available are inherently colonist, in opposition to one’s selfhood and autonomy. How to mitigate this lens in order to create work that is honest to one’s vision? How might it manifest itself? These are the main questions asked of the series. 

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2011

(MAPS)

If a person’s reality is constantly in transition, context becomes unrealiable and the body becomes a place. Migration activity, however enforced, is also a coping mechanism. The subjects of these drawings are neither within nor without, each “figure” is depicted in decontexualized surroundings to emphasize their groundlessness, in constant search for security. The intense detail and close-cropped compositions of the drawings embody the need to find new ways to express a visual lexicon through the figure. Using the writing tool ball point pen to draw, the scenerio of a portrait expands to include more than the realities that may befall or define the black body in space and time. Collectively, these drawings offer a map for those willing to travel towards new destinations and meanings for blackness.

“Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I’m looking for that in-between state in an individual where the over-arching definition is lost. Skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can literally be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. From there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.”

—Artist Statement, 2011

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2012

Black Surfaces. Black Grounds.

Using consistent materials—black ballpoint pen ink and black acrylic ink on black matted or glossed illustration board—surface details in the markmaking are drawn with various linework, shading, and other sinewy, tactile traces in an attempt to deconstruct “Black” as a concept along with its visual inconsistencies pertaining to light, shadow, and texture.

A subversive play with relative and filtered distinctions between looking at someone and actually seeing an individual—and how the illusion of image-making inexorably fails at exacting both. In each drawing, the problematic contradictions ingrained in the chroma are emphasized, as they cannot exist outside of a two-dimensional plane. The subjects of the series are interpreted bare in an isolated space, their purpose is not to be a spectacle for the viewer.

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2013

All These Garlands Prove Nothing

A record of different hair stylings donned from 2008 to 2012, through the filter of memory. Each portrait conveys the same subject seemingly at issue with varying personas. The drawings were created using graphite, ballpoint pen ink, and marker on paper. Collectively, the series stresses the dubiousness of a singular picture and how arbitrary an identity may seem once embellishments are altered or disregarded altogether.

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2013

Guaging Tone (Of Another Kind)

The series premise asks: “when an aesthetic is inverted, does the meaning stay the same?” And, if so, does this extend to how people read images of themselves? To explore this, each drawing is comprised of metallic marker on illustration board.

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2014

Like the Sea

The series title is excerpted from an aphorism in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), which states:

The series captures Ojih Odutola’s two younger brothers. They are surrounded by tapestries emblematic of the various locales their family has lived. These sites and the memories associated are interwoven into the moments of love shared there. The series was a means for moving away from the decontexualized surroundings of past works, to give the drawings more subjectity through specificity of a narrative.

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Mixed-media drawings created using pastel, charcoal, marker and pencil on paper. Isolated visual narratives with some diptychs and triptychs combining image with text.

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A single work, comprised of 43 drawings, depicting well-known, white men in their youth—all rendered in black, ballpoint pen and graphite—to illustrate how lack of individuality and dehumanization might occur when one is systemically indistringuishable from the sameness of a group.

There is no supportive text or enhancing narrative added; each drawing is titled in the sequence it was created. Awash in a singular color, these figures are stripped of the power construct and exclusivity whitness and masculinity affords in society. At the mercy of shifting reads and perceptions, these portraits become “othered,” included at the margins.

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Chapter 1: presenting a fictionalized union between titled sons from two artistocratic, Nigerian families: the Emeka and Omodele, known as the UmuEze Amara Clan and House of Obafemi, respectively. Comprised of pastel, charcoal, and graphite on paper, the series focuses on the Emeka marquisate, one of the oldest noble clans of Nigeria, highlighing their wealth and holdings if colonialism and chattel slavery interventions had never distupted the country. The bold, crimson-clay red wall color chosen is emblematic of the stature and wealth of the family.

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Chapter 2, Part 1: involving two fictionalized Nigerian, aristocratic families, with focus on the Omodele barony, House of Obafemi, who are known for their ambassadorship, wine, and travels. The soft, pink wall color was chosen to emphasize the family’s matrilineal power.

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Chapter 2, Part 2: involving two fictionalized Nigerian, aristocratic families, with focus on the Omodele barony, House of Obafemi. Comprised of pastel, charcoal, and graphite on paper, Part Two centers on the relatioships between parents and their children, mainly that of Lord Temitope with his father. The haint blue wall color is inspired by and pays homage to the rich Gullah culture prominent in Savannah, Georgia.

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Chapter 3: the final chapter depicting the fictional Emeka and Omodole families and their collective legacy as the UmuEze Amara Clan and House of Obafemi. Drawn using pastel, charcoal, and graphite on paper. The lavender/lilac wall color brings a finality in tone to the series, signifying the changing of regimes.

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Seven drawings created specifically for the 12th Manifesta biennial theme, “The Planetary Garden,” which highlights the globally diverse history of Palermo. This small series presents possible encounters through the lens of trade between Italy and Nigeria. The chosen wall color reflects interiors often found in the antiquanted buildings of Palermo, Italy.

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Travel documentation, auto-portrait project of 30+ drawings and sketches, charting creative shifts in material and method. Each portrait exemplifies how “capturing a moment” for and of oneself is futile. The archive has nothing to do with the moment experienced by nature of how it reduces each moment to function.

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A recently unearthed ancient parable set in central Nigeria’s Jos Plateau. Comprised of 40 monochomatic drawings, created using pastel, charcoal and chalk on gessoed linen and board. Read as a single body of work, it questions the nature of mythologies we tell ourselves.

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A series of anecdotal drawings made of colored pencil, graphite and ink on Dura-lar film: some images with accompanying, free-associative text, others isolated pictures and text narratives. Most of the works were created during COVID-19 quarantine in New York.

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As of 2021, Ojih Odutola contributes to her «Missed Connections» artist column in Elephant Magazine. Each biannual issue features a new scene constructed by the artist.

Scenes Catalog