Untitled

2015 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

As she traces the same shape again and again, Ojih Odutola’s lines become darker and deeper, sometimes pushed to the point where their blackness becomes luminous. Set against a blank white background, as in Untitled (2015), Ojih Odutola’s figures are stark, resolute in their darkness. The surface of her subject’s skin becomes ribbon-like, lines weaving across the contours of their head and neck. The simplicity and starkness of Ojih Odutola’s composition—most often, black on white, sometimes with shots of color woven through the deep black lines—enable a consideration of skin, blackness, surface, and detail, all hovering out of time and space.

Though born in Nigeria, artist Toyin Ojih Odutola was raised largely in the United States, living in Alabama, California, and now New York. Known for her intricate drawings of human heads and figures, Ojih Odutola’s artistic practice is concerned with the representation of race, and the concept of blackness as visual marker and social construct. Her drawings are made through intricately and fastidiously layering black lines—building up a density that Ojih Odutola describes as “black on black on black.” Using pens and markers as her primary media, Ojih Odutola builds textures through sinewy black lines, shot through at times with metallic color. The ripples and rolls of the figures’ surfaces recall the anatomical structure of musculature, and also provide an unreal look to her often stoic figures.

Colors:

© » ARTS EQUATOR

Censorship and “Saving Face” In Cambodia

Censorship and “Saving Face” In Cambodia | ArtsEquator Skip to content Censorship in Cambodia is often tied to upholding a certain image of the country...

© » KADIST

Orión

Adriana Martínez

2015

Her 2015 work Orión is a black flag-like cloth with glow-in-the-dark symbols embroidered in the shape of the constellation...

© » ARTNEWS RETROSPECTIVE

‘Everything Was a Muse to Him’: A Jacob Lawrence Expert on a 1944 ARTnews Profile of the Artist

A Jacob Lawrence Expert on a Profile of Him from ARTnews’s Archives – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Alex Greenberger Plus Icon Alex Greenberger Senior Editor, ARTnews View All January 24, 2020 1:35pm George Chinsee Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) was one of the deftest documentarians of African-American life in the United States, and over the next few years, people across the country will get a chance to see one of his greatest series of paintings, “Struggle: From the History of the American People” (1954–56), united in full for the first time...

© » THE JEALOUS CURATOR

“to be still”

Soooo, when Malcom Gladwell’s podcast network reaches out to you and says, “Hey Danielle, would you like to share part of an interview we did with Marina Abramović with your listeners”, you say, “ummm, OKAY!” I’ve put a little mini episode together, featuring a 20 minute excerpt from their show, “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso”...

© » LARRY'S LIST

Q-Tip to Exhibit His Private Art Collection in New York - via Pitchfork

“Q-Tip: The Collection” includes the Richard Prince work featured on the cover of We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service...