Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria) is a visual artist and columnist based in New York. She is best known for her detailed, multimedia drawings often presented in eclectic, large scale series, or “chapters,” using pen ink, pencil, charcoal and pastel on paper, board and linen. Themes in her work have explored the malleability of meaning, memory, and power through portraiture and story-telling.
Odutola has participated in solo and group exhibitions at national and international institutions, including the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, Barbican Centre, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Whitney Museum of American Art, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, The Drawing Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the Menil Collection, as well as the 12th Manifesta Biennial in Palermo, Italy.
Toyin Ojih Odutola earned her BA from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In 2016, she undertook a residency at Headlands Center for the Arts; she was the Lida A. Orzeck ‘68 Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Barnard College from 2017—2018; and in 2019, inducted into the National Academy of Design.
Public collections of her artworks are held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Harvard Art Museums, Massachusetts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, among others.
