As a teenager, art became an escape from the racism she experienced living in the South. Her high school art teacher recognized Odutola’s talent and introduced her to the work of artists like Kerry James Marshall and Kara Walker. At the University of Alabama, she began working in the style she is now best known for, characterized by the use of a ballpoint pen and intricate layers of shading and lines that form patterns of tonal gradation. She went on to refine this approach through graduate study at the California College of Arts in San Francisco. Using found imagery and personal memories, she develops composite subjects and locations, shifting between the real and the imaginary.

The concept of travel is central to Odutola’s practice. The artist notes, “In the making of the work, skin is the geography I travel in order to discover each individual and his/her story. With every line I mark up, I map out the territory of their realities.”1 Odutola’s figures are enigmatic and mysterious; the worlds they inhabit are informed by art history, popular culture, and experiences of migration and dislocation. She combines found imagery and personal memories to develop composite subjects and locations, shifting between the real and the imaginary to examine dynamics of narrative, authenticity, and representation.

Odutola received a BA from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. She won the Rees Visionary Award in 2018; was shortlisted for the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize in 2019; and elected as a National Academician in 2019. The Studio Museum has presented her work in exhibitions such as Fore (2012) and Black: Color, Material, Concept (2016).

1) Rujeko Hockley and Melinda Lang, “Toyin Ojih Odutola: By Her Design,” Whitney Museum of American Art, accessed November 11, 2022, whitney.org/essays/toyin-ojih-odutola#:~:text=In%20the%20making%20of%20the,the%20territory%20of%20their%20realities.%E2%80%9D.