Toyin Ojih Odutola

Toyin Ojih Odutola was born in Ife, Nigeria, in 1985 and raised in Alabama. She studied Art and Communications at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2008, and later earned an MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2012.

Her work focuses on the sociopolitical significance of skin color, which she explores through multimedia drawings. Odutola investigates her personal journey, beginning in Nigeria and transitioning to Alabama, where she absorbed American culture in a notably conservative region.

When asked why most of her subjects are Black, the artist responded: “They’re Black people because they’re drawn with a black pen, but not all of the characters are African American. One thing I like to play with is the question of ‘What is Black?’ Is it Black because I draw it? Is it Black because it looks Black? Is it Black because you think it’s Black? Or maybe a lot of it is just a filter, and filters are obstructed by how people view and perceive the image, which is and is not what it seems.”

Using black ballpoint ink, Toyin Odutola approaches the skin as a topography, layering color to map a subjective, individual geography shaped by real-life experiences. She is also inspired by the history of African textiles, which influences the rich textures she creates on the faces of her subjects, undermining the darkness in her drawings.

With ballpoint pen, graphite, pastel, and black charcoal, Odutola prioritizes form, lines, and marks over literal representation and factual narrative, crafting open images where the essence lies in the structure rather than a clear-cut story. The portraits she creates have a distinct individuality, while simultaneously rejecting racial specificity.

For Odutola, darkness is not only a subject but a question. Historically, darkness has often been narrowly interpreted as a racial signifier, but in her work, race is present and yet, paradoxically, it isn’t. Her portraits explore how to free darkness from a purely racial connotation, opening it up to mythology, racism, beauty, and life. The individuals in her portraits engage in a dialogue with something more unknowable about their identities, almost becoming monolithic in the process.