Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria) creates multimedia drawings on various surfaces. Themes in her work have explored the malleability of identity, meaning, and power through portraiture and story-telling. She is based in New York.¹

Selected works include, Tell Me A Story, I Don’t Care If It’s True (2020), A Countervailing Theory (2019—2020), Scenes of Exchange (2018), The Treatment (2015—2017), Of Context and Without (2015), Untold Stories (2015), Like the Sea (2014), and All These Garlands Prove Nothing (2013). A recent series on the lives of two Nigerian families resulted in the connected exhibitions, A Matter of Fact (2016), To Wander Determined (2017), Testing the Name (2018), The Firmament (2018), and When Legends Die (2018).

She has participated in exhibitions at The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Renaissance Society, Seattle Museum of Art, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the Menil Collection, as well as the 12^th Manifesta Biennial in Palermo, Italy.²

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. At the 2020 Apollo Awards, she was named “Artist of the Year.”³

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; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, amongst others.⁴

1. Additional projects include, printmaking and a photography notebook.
2. Further information on current exhibitions, news updates, and contacts; also on Instagram.
3. Refer to PDF of her CV for an extensive catalog.
4. Ibid.

©Toyin Ojih Odutola 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Scenes of Exchange 2018

Scenes of Exchange
2018