Toyin Ojih Odutola
A Countervailing Theory
11 August 2020 – 24 January 2021
The exhibition has been commissioned by the Barbican, London. Supported by Arts Council England and Jack Shainman Gallery.
Barbican Art Gallery presents A Countervailing Theory, a site-specific installation for The Curve and the first-ever UK commission by Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola. An epic cycle of new work unfurls across the 90-metre long gallery, exploring an imagined ancient myth conceived by the artist. An immersive soundscape by renowned conceptual sound artist Peter Adjaye fills the space in response to Ojih Odutola’s work. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring a new text by acclaimed writer Zadie Smith and an interview with the artist.
Biography
Toyin Ojih Odutola was born in 1985 in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and currently lives and works in New York. Ojih Odutola has exhibited at various institutions, including The Drawing Center, New York (2018—19); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017—18); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2016); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2015); Studio Museum Harlem, New York (2015, 2012); Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield (2013); and Menil Collection, Houston, (2012). Her work is in major permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art; Baltimore Museum of Art; New Orleans Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; Spencer Museum of Art; Honolulu Museum of Art; and the National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian, Washington, DC). She was featured in Manifesta in 2018, winner of the Rees Visionary Award in 2018 and shortlisted for the Pinchuk Foundation Future Generation Prize in 2019. Ojih Odutola earned her BA from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
