Toyin Ojih Odutola’s Latest Exhibition Is a Family Affair

On May 6, Toyin Ojih Odutola unveiled her latest exhibition, Ilé Oriaku, at New York City’s Jack Shainman Gallery. Across 31 artworks, some of which were shown last year in the Nigerian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and in her solo exhibit at the Kunsthalle Basel, the artist pays homage to her late grandmother, who passed away last June. (Ilé is the Yoruba word for house, and Oriaku is her grandmother’s name.) The central location where these works unfold is an Mbari house, a sacred ritual space rooted in Nigerian tradition. “I’ve always been attracted to West African craft and ornamentation,” Odutola tells W at the Tribeca gallery. “With this show, I was thinking a lot about the clay houses of Benin City and how these beautiful designs were crafted far earlier than anything we could pin on a European equivalent.”

Crafting this exhibit allowed Odutola to channel her heartbreak and honor her heritage. “Grief is constant and it never goes away,” Odutola says. “So, it’s about how you mitigate that. For me, that meant being in my studio working to revere and honor my grandmother. That was my obligation. I offered my thanks to the memories that I hold from spending time with her all these years and having that presence in my life.”

The award-winning artist, whose work has been shown worldwide from The Met to the National Portrait Gallery, sat with W to discuss this new show, which is accompanied by a forthcoming monograph, and how she hopes to inspire audiences with her art. “I’m very grateful to make the work that I do,” she says. “The fact that this is my job is so absurd to me every day.”

What was the inspiration behind this new exhibition?

I got the news that my grandmother had passed while working on my exhibitions for the Nigerian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and Kunsthalle Basel last year, and it sort of subsumed the entire show. She was all I could think about. Even though I was working on different things prior to that news, it all fit together. There were works in those shows that I always felt she would enjoy. For instance, there’s an artwork about the Aba Women’s Rebellion. Well, I call it the rebellion—the colonists call it “the riot.” It was in response to the Great Depression and a palm oil tax, which is a woman's tax. The women were Igbo, as is my grandmother’s side of my family, so there are pieces like that throughout. Ilé Oriaku is an homage to her.

Is there a particular work that you’re proud of?

There’s a diptych shown here that was also in the Venice Biennale. I love the idea of artworks that are literally in conversation with themselves as a structure and an object. And in the second room, you can actually hear my grandmother’s voice. At the time of her passing, I went through my phone and found an interview I did with her in 2018. Hearing it brought me back to her joy and her sense of humor.

You’ve become known for the way you situate your artworks for the viewer. When did that become important to your practice?

When you’re in my exhibition, I want it to feel like you’re traveling through a comic book. One of the things that I’ve been very adamant about is the idea of an undulating hang. It’s become a signature for me. It creates a floating effect. It’s not so much about the works themselves, but about the space between them. It’s almost like a syncopation, very musical or jazz-like. I’ve done it in pretty much every show since my 2020 Barbican exhibit, because every space is different and loaded with its own history. Oftentimes in my career, at least in these last five years, I've been the first person in the diaspora of African descent who is showing. It’s impossible for me not to disrupt these spaces, just by the presence of my work. In spaces like these, there is that grandiosity, but I want a kid from the Bronx who's on a school trip to come here and sit on the floor and draw. If you leave enough room, it can happen.

How has your artistic eye evolved over the years? What things interest you now that maybe didn't in the past?

When I was starting out, I felt like I needed to refute any sort of definition. The more I refuted it, the freer I could be. Whenever somebody said, “Oh, this is what Toyin does now,” I would do something else. The through-line has always been a certain kind of askew or off-centeredness to things. Mastery is something I avoid like the plague. Even in terms of the different materials that I’ve used over time—from ballpoint to now chalk, pastel, and colored pencil—I always try to find a palette that feels grounded. There’s a feeling of humanity in everything I do, even if the work is fantastical, or if the story feels a bit strange or far-fetched.

In terms of change, I find that people tend to be very obsessed with ownership and possession of a certain kind of aesthetic. I have never wanted to claim anything as mine. I’m just sharing it. The possession part is when it becomes a brand, and I've always been very suspicious of that application. If I’m sharing something that I’ve revered and spent time with, that’s the due diligence part. That’s what I do in the colors, how I choose to frame it, and how I choose to display the work. It’s about soulfulness. I’ve noticed that people spend a lot more time with the work when it's considered in that way.

Are there any other special moments in the exhibition that are meaningful to you?

There’s a poem by my mother that you see when you first enter. It wasn’t written for the show specifically; it was actually a text that she sent me when I was going through something. My mom be sending bars to me in a text message. It’s a beautiful idea about how we view the shadow ahead of us and behind us as a marker of time. Time is a theme throughout the show: how we spend it, how we lose it, what gets left behind if it’s stolen, what we can craft from the limited time that we have. So, I love that that’s the first thing you see.