Toyin Ojih Odutola |
Curating Art Outside the Lines
Toyin Ojih Odutola is a Nigerian American Artist. Her work is described as having, a “Curious mood evoked in her ballpoint, pencil, and charcoal drawings. It is adventurous, textured with abrupt tangents, and suffused with humor.
In recent years, gallerists and viewers have been increasingly eager to see images of Black people in the kinds of art institutions from which they were long excluded. But Ojih Odutola is not interested in simply inserting Black faces into traditionally white spaces, or in mirroring back to white audiences what they presume to know about Black people. Instead, she wants to question the logic behind what we, as Black people, believe, and to burrow into the sense of uncertainty created by imagining alternative existences. Her images ask us to think beyond representation and to wrestle with the implications of power, to consider who gets to tell stories about the world.” - The New York Times
