The Marchioness

Toyin Ojih Odutola is a Nigerian-American contemporary artist. She was born in Nigeria and moved to the United States with her family as a child. She first lived in Berkeley, California, and later moved to Huntsville, Alabama. She went to art school in San Francisco and now resides in New York City. According to Ojih Odutola, growing up in conservative Alabama influenced her work. 

I went from being just this Nigerian kid in Berkeley to being a black kid in Alabama. You start to realize, “Oh, I’m flattened. I’m not a whole person anymore.”

My identity is not based on performance, it’s based on something that’s predetermined by someone else, and I don’t even understand what that is because I’m an African who came to America.

Suddenly I’m African-American and black when I didn’t even know what the hell that meant.

Toyin Ojih Odutola

Ojih Odutola is known for her distinctive mark-making style. She uses layered marks to replicate the luminosity of skin. She only uses basic drawing materials, such as ballpoint pens, pencils, pastels and charcoal. Her work rethinks traditional portraiture by using it as a method for visual storytelling. She uses her work to explore themes of identity and transporting the self.

How we cover our bodies and arrange them in space is part of how we communicate identity.

Toyin Ojih Odutola

Ojih Odutola’s book The UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi is an illustrated story about two fictional aristocratic Nigerian families, the UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi. The book features artworks from her ongoing body of work, which depicts figures from the two fictional families. The artist creates a fictional world in which British colonial rule and transatlantic slavery did not happen. In this world the family lines of Nigerian aristocracy were not disrupted. The figure in The Marchioness is a fictional character created by the artist for this body of work. She is a member of the UmuEze Amara Clan. The title of the work, The Marchioness, refers to her social status. A marchioness is someone who holds the rank of nobility of marquess, or is the wife of a marquess. The fine clothing she wears and her surroundings are used to show her wealth and status. The figure in the work is foreshortened, sitting forward in a way that makes her appear nearly life-sized to the viewer while presiding over the room in which she sits.