Toyin Ojih Odutola "To Wander Determined" at The Whitney

Toyin Ojih Odutola, Birmingham (Left)

A Nigerian colleague of mine first put Toyin Ojih Odutola on my radar about a year or so ago. The artist was born in Nigeria and came the States with her family at age five, grew up in Huntsville, Alabama and is now based in New York. Originally known for her textural pen drawings depicting and investigating “what skin feels like,” these works gave skin an almost fur-like quality.

Toyin Ojih Odutola, Newlyweds On Holiday, 2016

In her current solo exhibition at the Whitney (her first solo show in New York) titled To Wander Determined, Ojih Odutola stages a series of fictional portraits detailing the lives of two aristocratic, Lagos-based, Nigerian families. For the artist, these images serve to correct the ‘Eurocentric art history’ where portraiture is overwhelmingly white and black characters are footnotes cast in secondary roles or left out entirely.

Toyin Ojih Odutola, Unclaimed Estates, 2017

Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined presents a new body of work alongside a small selection of earlier works, produced in the last year. The exhibition is on view in the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Gallery on the Whitney’s first floor, which is free and open to the public. When I worked out where to find this gallery (since I had actually never been to it before due to it’s sort of tucked away locale), it made me question the meaning of the exhibition placement in the large context of the Whitney. If you’re giving this artist a, to use a Solange reference, seat at the table, is there such a thing as a sub-par seat?

Toyin Ojih Odutola, Winter Dispatch, 2016