Born in Ilé- Ifẹ̀, Nigeria (b. 1985)

Toyin Ojih Odutola

This Side of Paradise, 2017

Charcoal, pastel, and graphite on paper
© Toyin Ojih Odutola; courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo by Ian Reeves.

Since 2011, Katz has been making paintings of roosters that she refers to as “cock paintings,” relishing the discomfort of the term. As she has acknowledged, these works reference the male ego: “The paintings are about masculinity, and about trying to work out the iconography of power, and the attraction to it.” The Other Side depicts a rooster in motion through a series of overlapping silhouettes, speed- ing from left to right in a way that recalls Eadweard Muybridge’s nineteenth-century photographic studies of moving forms. In each of the “cock paintings,” Katz sprinkles grains of rice onto the canvas and paints over them, creating an impasto texture that reinforces the works’ materiality in the face of painterly illusion. The title and imagery of The Other Side draw on the timeless antihumor of the road-crossing chicken.

Toyin Ojih Odutola. Photo by Vicente Muñoz for Interview Magazine

“It becomes about the time, place, and context—”Of Context and Without,” this idea of how malleable identity is when you’re looking at a portrait. Are we seeing a portrait of a subject or are we seeing a portrait of the artist?”

—Toyin Ojih Odutola

Toyin Ojih Odutola

“It becomes about the time, place, and context—”Of Context and Without,” this idea of how malleable identity is when you’re looking at a portrait. Are we seeing a portrait of a subject or are we seeing a portrait of the artist?”—Toyin Ojih Odutola

“It becomes about the time, place, and context—”Of Context and Without,” this idea of how malleable identity is when you’re looking at a portrait. Are we seeing a portrait of a subject or are we seeing a portrait of the artist?”

—Toyin Ojih Odutola