Toyin Ojih Odutola

Born in Ife, Nigeria in 1985, Toyin Ojih Odutola is a contemporary visual artist known for her vivid multimedia drawings and works on paper. Her unique style of complex mark-making and lavish compositions rethink the category and traditions of portraiture and storytelling. Ojih Odutola’s artwork often investigates a variety of themes from socio-economic inequality, the legacy of colonialism, queer and gender theory, notions of blackness as a visual and social symbol, as well as experiences of migration and dislocation. In 1990, she immigrated with her family to Berkeley, California, and would then move to Huntsville, Alabama in 1994.

Ojih Odutola received her MFA in painting and drawing from California College of the Arts. While studying in San Francisco, she co-curated her first solo show in New York, “(MAPS)” at Jack Shainman Gallery in 2011. It was composed of a collection of individual black figures in decontextualized white backgrounds drawn in layers with a ballpoint pen. The ideas behind this series of skin as geography introduced her as a pioneering voice in the visual representation of black skin through art. The artist has since gone on to exhibit in London, Cape Town, San Francisco, Paris, and Chicago. Her work is currently in the collections of several major art institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington. Odutola currently lives and works in New York.