Toyin Ojih Odutola


Toyin Ojih Odutola is an Nigerian-American contemporary visual artist known for her vivid multimedia drawings and works on paper. Ojih Odutola produces multimedia drawings that engage in the complexity and shape-ability of identity. Shown in her unique style of complex mark-making, her lavish compositions rethink the category and traditions of portraiture and storytelling. The creative work of Ojih Odutola is linked to inequality and the notion of blackness as a visual and a social symbol.

Early life and education

Ojih Odutola was born in 1985 in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where both her parents were teachers. In 1990 her mother, Nelene Ojih, and her 2-year-old brother, Datun, took her to accompany her father, Adeola Odutola in Berkeley, California, where her father was doing research and teaching chemistry at the university. After four years in Berkeley, the family moved to Huntsville, Alabama in 1994 where her father became a professor at Alabama A&M University and her mother a nurse.She is of Yoruba and Igbo descent from her paternal and maternal heritage, respectively.
In 2007, as a undergraduate upcoming senior, she did the Norfolk Summer Residency for Music & Art, from Yale University in Conneticut. Shortly after in 2008, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art and Communications from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In 2012, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from California College of the Arts. She is represented by the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City, where she lives and works.

Career

Once she graduated from the California College of Arts in San Francisco, with the help of Jack Shainman, Toyin performed her first solo show in 2011. It was composed of a collection of individual black faces in white backgrounds drawn in layers with a ballpoint pen. The idea behind this artwork portrayed her as a genius creator in the representation of black skin.
Forbes featured Ojih Odutola in its 2012 list of 30 notable individuals under 30 in the category "Art & Style."
Her work was also the featured cover story for Juxtapoz Magazine in November 2017, on the occasion of her museum solo exhibition, To Wander Determined, at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. "To Wander Determined" is a vibrant series of figures relatively connected by a fictional narrative of two a Nigerian families. Ojih Odutola introduces the portraits as private work from the two families, which are of different upper-class origins. The premise behind the portraits being fictional allow the audience to decipher the truth behind them. Toyin Ojih makes the stories and lives of these characters fictional, but as it is done correctly, the audience can immerse themselves in the emotions, vibrant accessories, costumes, and lives presented in front of them.
She was appointed the Lida A. Orzeck ’68 Distinguished Artist-in-Residence for the academic year of 2017 to 2018 at Barnard College in New York.
In September 2018, she was nominated as one of the 21 shortlisted artists for the Future Generation Art Prize for 2019.
For The New York Times Magazine's annual The Lives They Lived issue, Ojih Odutola was invited to create a tribute portrait of the late singer, songwriter, and pianist Aretha Franklin, for its cover, published on December 30, 2018.
Ojih Odutola was inducted into the National Academicians Class of 2019, of the National Academy of Design. A lifetime honor appointment and tradition dating back to 1825, current members confidentially nominate and elect a new class each year honoring the artists' remarkable contributions to the canon and story of American art. The exhibits and artwork that is shown by the ambassadors inspire the next generation while cultivating its 200-year-old tradition. The National Academicians assist as ambassadors for the arts.

Style and influences

Ojih Odutola is best known for her very detailed portrait drawings, entirely or primarily done in black pen ink. Her more recent work has expanded to include charcoal, pastel, and pencil. She credits her high school art teacher, Dana Bathurst, for introducing her to African-American portraiture artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden and Barkley L. Hendricks.
Ojih Odutola has also received inspiration and influence from comic books, Japanese manga, and anime. She credits the artist, Cathy G. Johnson who does webcomics. Johnson's style is different compared to Odutola's but, she has created art with such influence. Artists like Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, and Julie Mehretu had a huge impact on her when she was in graduate school.
Ojih Odutola's work is often viewed as challenging the many traditional notions about social and political identity as well as the framework of which it is defined. Her work is an intentional means of translating those narratives about race, identity, and class visually. This is done through the medium she uses as well as the textures conveyed in the figures in her detailed drawings. For Ojih Odutola, the texture is a form of communication and language with the viewer. The various marks she creates represent dialect and accent. Ojih has mentioned she has been afraid of depicting women in her art. She has been afraid of portraying women as it can come with objectification. Ojih steers towards using her brothers in her artwork, particularly in the series, "Of Another Kind" from a different perspective. When portraying naked people, she imagines them for who they are, and believe they deserve no labels to them. In this piece, she exposes her brothers in order to break the notion of portraying black males in an open position.

Selected exhibitions

"Flesh and Bone: Mixed Media Exhibition of Bodies and Nature", Madrone Lounge, San Francisco. Curated by Leila Fakouri. Misc. Womanhood, Ori: Center for African Diasporic Culture, Oakland, California. Curated by Muinat Kemi Amin) Panoply Festival of Arts, Huntsville City Council for the Arts, Huntsville, Alabama UAHuntsville Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition, Huntsville, Alabama
"Falling Through Space Drawn by the Line", UB Art Galleries, University at Buffalo
Ojih Odutola has also participated in group exhibitions at various institutions, including:
Ojih Odutola's work is held in many public collections, including: