Toyin Ojih Odutola at The Curve
This spring, London’s brutalist landmark, the Barbican Centre, will play host to Toyin Ojih Odutola: A Countervailing Theory.
From 26 March - 26 July 2020, the Barbican’s world-class exhibition space will present the show — the first-ever UK commission by Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola and a site-specific installation. Best of all, it’s free.
Portrait of Toyin Ojih Odutola Photo by Beth Wilkinson © Toyin Ojih Odutola. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
The exhibition is all new work from the artist, and will unfold along The Curve’s 90-metre long space. About the show, Ojih Odutola said: “Walking into Barbican Centre’s The Curve for the first time was an enchanting experience of having a space unfold as you travel through it, not quite knowing what will come around the corner. The feeling of possibility it provides to create and exhibit a story one can meander through in real-time gifted so much promise in how to engage with an audience.”
Through the medium of drawing materials, which include pencil, pastel, ballpoint pen and charcoal, the show explores an imagined ancient myth conceived by the artist and plays with the idea that drawing can be a form of storytelling.
The exhibition draws on a range of references, from ancient history to pop-culture and even contemporary politics and the artist’s aim is that the audience piece’s together each of these fragments to create a narrative. The work often takes the form of immense portraits, or imaginary fictions that play out through a series of works akin to episodes or chapters — these sequences invite the viewer to enter the artist’s fantastical world, which she has spent months creating.
Toyin Ojih Odutola was born in 1985 in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, but currently lives and works in New York. In previous work, she has explored identity and the role of place in shaping it throughout history, as well as the socio-political construct of skin colour and a persistent attention to the texture of skin, often achieving extraordinary luminous effects.
Semblance of Certainty from A Countervailing Theory, (2019) © Toyin Ojih Odutola. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Representatives of State, (2016-2017)
© Toyin Ojih Odutola. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
. Home from Magdalene, (2016) © Toyin Ojih Odutola. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Toyin Ojih Odutola: A Countervailing Theory is at The Curve, Barbican Centre 26 March – 26 July 2020
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