In long, elegant black suede boots and a billowing chiffon white dress, Toyin Ojih Odutola poses in powerful contrapposto. Framed against a drawing of soft grey clouds, Odutola’s slender figure is evocative of what Zadie Smith has described as the artist’s profound ability to harness serene, subdued visions of “African utopia.” (Zadie Smith, “What Would We Be Like if Racism Never Existed?” in: Toyin Odutola: The UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi, New York 2021, p. 14) Odutola stages herself amongst high-end objects, including a sleek leather chair, a sumptuous pink marble sculpture, and two strong-featured African masks. Her calm gaze discloses nothing, leaving it to the viewer to answer the urgent questions that the image provokes. Through Line bears a double meaning, connoting both a continuous thread of narrative and the didactic, luminescent topography of the picture’s surface.

In Through Line, Odutola reaches for the chromatic vibrancy and tactility of charcoal and pastel, mapping out complex patterns of light, color and shadow. Unlike the work of early American masters like Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett, Odutola’s drawing moves away from themes of social realism and instead tells a story of freedom and luxury. This work comes from a series where the artist weaves together an epic fictionalized narrative of two Nigerian aristocratic houses, the UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi, joined in marriage by the families’ two male heirs. First exhibited at the Savannah Museum of Art in 2017, Through Line is a highly accomplished work from this celebrated cycle, which was shown in five chapters over between 2016 and 2018. Starting at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the subsequent chapters were shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah Georgia, Hood Museum at Dartmouth and finally at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.

Taken together, the series imagines an alternative history where vast generational wealth has replaced centuries of colonialization and exploitation by European countries on the continent. This is not the only conceit at play. As Logan Lockner observes, “the fact that this wealth is centered on – and allegedly being displayed by – a gay couple… is another fiction: a law signed by former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 prohibits public display of same-sex affection and criminalizes gay marriage.” (Logan Lockner, “Toyin Ojih Odutola: Testing the Name” in: ibid., p. 169)

For Odutola, criticality is between the lines and is inextricable from the viewer’s desire for her sitters. The décor selected for Through Line points to the multiplicity of meanings associated with inheritance: history, kinship, storytelling, wealth, and power. Odutola pushes at questions of ownership and class, especially as it relates to historically oppressed bodies. She has crafted a unique approach to presenting narrative: intent on imbibings her portraits with a sense of self-possession and ease, the artist constructs her scenes with no recapping or explanation. As Logan Lockner describes, with this series Odutola “demonstrates staggering capacities for craft and imagination, building an artificial world with the rich emotional and narrative texture of reality.” (Ibid., p. 170)