“Can black subjects be plausibly depicted as possessors of wealth and trustees of (Anglo) aristocratic lineages rather than as vassals who produce and safeguard the wealth of others? Ojih Odutola’s portraits suggest that this proposition isn’t.mes rely a matter of mise-en-scène… nor is it simply an inversion in which the expected white sitter is replaced by a black one. Rather, her work demands understanding of the ways in which black bodies might inhabit such spaces. Gesture, posture, and a kind of tactile relationship to domestic interiors and material objects become important ways of communicating black protagonists in possession of their surroundings and themselves.”
Toyin Ojih Odutola, shortlisted artist of the Future Generation Art Prize 2019
Mother and daughter lock affectionate gazes before a countryside field in Toyin Ojih Odutola’s 2017 Picnic on the Ground, a spectacular example of the artist’s masterful painterly finesse and draftsmanship through which she vividly narrates the grand universes of her own creation. The present work sees the very best of Ojih Odutola’s distinct artistic flair in the tactile intricacies replete throughout the composition, from the textured curls of the characters’ hair and sheer lace blouse and patterned white dress that adorn them, to the verdant sea of grass and dandelion that seems to whistle in the background against the dayt.mes breeze. This picturesque scene of Black figures in opulent repose belongs to a celebrated series in which Ojih Odutola chronicles an epic fictionalized mythology of two Nigerian aristocratic houses, the UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi, joined in marriage by the families’ two male heirs. Debuting at Testing the Name, Ojih Odutola’s solo exhibition at the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art in 2017, Picnic on the Ground is a superlative work from this larger conceptual portraiture saga, and it also prominently exhibited at her show at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 as a shortlisted recipient for the prestigious Future Generation Art Prize.
Born in Ife, Nigeria in 1985 and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, Ojih Odutola draws from her personal experience as an African American immigrant, through which she has developed a complex understanding of selfhood as innately multivalent and ever-changing. Ideas of migration, Blackness, and personal history manifest cohesively in Ojih Odutola’s practice as she reimagines Western traditions of portraiture by extending it into speculative realms, leading her to the fictional tableau of the UmuEze Amara Clan and the House of Obafemi. On this project, the artist has said “[it] was predicated by the idea of analyzing and dissecting wealth through historically oppressed bodies, and having the spaces they occupy not be a factor in what they consider themselves to be. The whole experiment was to depict one family who weren't smiling for you, who didn't care about your comfort as a viewer, it was about what they chose to do.” (The artist cited in: “Toyin Ojih Odutola: ‘Testing the Name,’” SCADworks, 13 July 2020 (online))
Part of Testing the Name, Picnic on the Ground belongs to an intimate chapter of Ojih Odutola’s larger artistic allegory which showcases private portraits of the Omodoele family from the House of Obafemi, a minor aristocratic house recognized for their global work and legacy across diplomatic, economic, and academic affairs. Throughout this exhibition, Toyin suggests the family’s historic reputation as avid travelers through their cosmopolitan private collects ion, which range from antiques to contemporary objects that evince their mobility and affluence. Though primarily based in Ota at the Obafemi Family Vineyards, the family members clearly enjoy the luxury of geographic freedom; in the present work, the meadow surroundings resemble the European countryside, positioning their leisure as Black subjects on such land as reclamation of power within the historical context of Western colonialism. With her back turned to the viewer, the maternal protagonist of Picnic on the Ground indeed remains remaining deeply self-possessed in a private and luxurious world that belongs exclusively to her and her toddler, of which we are offered only a glimpse.
“The intricacies of the imagined backdrop—landscape or interior—spill into the figures themselves, uniting them as one and the same. In many ways, the figures’ surroundings are an extension of their identities—a portrait of the tenor that they evoke.”
The present work brilliantly exemplifies Ojih Odutola’s distinctive style as she interweaves sinuous lines into chromatic patterns of vibrant tonal gradation that pulsate throughout the landscape, an effect which evokes her primary interest in the aesthetic topographies of skin. Also interspersed throughout the characters’ environ are material accessories such as a woven straw picnic mat and burgundy penny loafers, all of which help to compose at once an idle moment of tender parental intimacy and a refined display of luxury and leisure. Resplendent with dense layers of radiant colors and lines, Picnic on the Ground is larger-than-life scene that imbues the characters with a sense of elegance and ease through the fine details that construct it; as curator Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels states, “Toyin Ojih Odutola is the rare artist who [creates entire worlds], and does so with a sharp focus as she accelerates toward something so new and ambitious that it continues to be a praxis for exploration.” (Joeonna Belloraido-Samuels, "Foreword" in: Toyin Odutola: The Umueze Amara Clan and The House of Obafemi, New York 2021, p. 9)
Unlike the work of earlier African American portraitists like Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett, Ojih Odutola’s contemporary practice departs from seminal themes of social realism, instead weaving fabulously fictional stories of freedom and opulence. By portraying Black characters with evident signifiers of access and affluence, Ojih Odutola not only empowers them with the capacity of dignified indifference – a cultural privilege rarely afforded to people of color – but she also imagines and fashions new possibilities for historically oppressed people to exist outside the realities of the global colonial epist.mes . As the artist has said, “What would wealth look like in these countries if they’d been left alone?” (The artist cited in: Ibid.) At once political and poetic, Picnic in the Garden encapsulates the conceptual and technical brilliance of Ojih Odutola’s overarching artistic practice in its representation of a loving moment between mother and child.
