Stories of Creation, Stories For Our Time in Toyin Ojih Odutola’s A Countervailing Theory

at The Barbican, London (through 24 Jan 2021)
Reviewed by Christopher P Jones

Despite what intuition tells us, history is constantly changing. The revision of the past happens all around us and at all times, sometimes perniciously and sometimes for enlightened reasons. For her first exhibition in the UK, Toyin Ojih Odutola has done a brave and remarkable thing. She has created an entire origin-myth that not only revisits ancient African history but invents it. Through 40 new works specially commissioned for the Curve Gallery at London’s Barbican Centre, Ojih Odutola has hand-drawn a fictional prehistoric civilisation dominated by female rulers and served by males labourers.

This is How You Were Made; Final Stages from A Countervailing Theory (2019) © Toyin Ojih Odutola

Ojih Odutola, who was born in Nigeria, raised in Alabama and now lives in New York, is best known for her colour-saturated portraits with their distinct focus on contemporary notions of identity.

In this exhibition, her preference for vivid colouration has been replaced by a strictly monochrome palette. Titled A Countervailing Theory, the London show falls somewhere between Grecian classical frieze, Hogarthian social allegory and graphic-novel storyboard. The single wall space — a 90-metre “curve” of gallery wall — is replete with life-size figures…