Birmingham (Triptych)

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"Birmingham" is a four-color lithograph with gold leaf on white Somerset satin paper by artist, Toyin Ojih Odutola.

Ojih Odutola is a Nigerian-born artist, who immigrated to the United States as a young child. Although her family temporarily resided in California, they relocated in the following years to Huntsville, Alabama.1 Ojih Odutola notes that upon moving to the United States “[her] skin, became a definition”; a jarring change to her identity that would go on to inform the questions and constructs investigated in her body of work.2

"Birmingham" is a triptych, or a work made up of three component images, which are always shown together in a particular, predetermined order by the artist.

The decision to create this triptych is rare for Ojih Odutola, as she has said that she enjoys portraiture because it is a “means of playing with perception," alluding to the fact that a single rendering of an individual is incapable of capturing their multifaceted identity.3

And yet, here in "Birmingham," we are gifted with three prints of the same individual, Ojih Odutola's brother.4 While still far from a complete picture of who her brother is, Ojih Odutola is granting a more detailed look at him than she typically allows of her viewers. 

Each frame shows a different emotion, feeling, and most notably, body language, even though the figures' physical characteristics, like their hair, shirt and necklace, are constant. How do you think your perception of this individual would change if you only saw one of these three images?

Perhaps Ojih Odutola created this triptych to investigate that question, wondering how our thoughts and impressions would shift with more or less information about this figure. 

I am also intrigued by the way Ojih Odutola has chosen to depict the skin of her brother. The skin feels anatomical; resembling what muscles might look like with their skin torn away.

Through depicting his skin in this way, Ojih Odutola is able to literally strip her brother clean of the skin that defined her family and create a new narrative.

When speaking about how she depicts skin in “Birmingham,” and her body of work at large, Ojih Odutola shared “when I started this style the first thing I thought of was, what does my skin feel like? We have enough about what my skin looks like, but what does it feel like to have this skin? So like, a lot of the layers and a lot of that skill is to really press down and get the feeling and texture. The marks are like scarification.”5

 - Mallory Schultz, Art Collections & Exhibitions Fellow 2019 - 2020

[1] Dodie Kazanjian, “Reimagining Black Experience in the Radical Drawings of Toyin Ojih Odutola," Vogue, July 17, 2018, https://www.vogue.com/article/toyin-ojih-odutola-interview-vogue-august-2018.
[2] “Toyin Ojih Odutola, Artist-in-Residence at Barnard College," YouTube video, 3:04, posted by Barnard College, January 26, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZ2B-6eeh8.
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Recent Acquisitions: Toyin Ojih Odutola,” Frye Museum, May 25, 2020 accessed, https://fryemuseum.org/exhibitions/recent-acquisitions-toyin-ojih-odutola.
[5] NOWNESS, “On Collaboration: Solange Knowles x Toyin Odutola,” NOWNESS video, 4:34, November 5, 2013, https://www.nowness.com/series/on-collaboration/on-collaboration-solange-knowles-x-toyin-odutola.

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