ThoughtGallery.org > Just Announced > Conversation with Zadie Smith and Toyin Ojih Odutola SOLD OUT

Conversation with Zadie Smith and Toyin Ojih Odutola SOLD OUT

Join us for a conversation between writer Zadie Smith and For Opacity artist Toyin Ojih Odutola. On the heels of Smith’s essay on Ojih Odutola in British Vogue, this dialogue will explore the “Afroternative” present that permeates Ojih Odutola’s drawings, and how that alternative collides with our reality.

Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985, Nigeria) distinguishes herself by the range of materials she uses, including graphite, white and black charcoal, ballpoint pen, pastel, color pencil, and marker, each of which she employs both in the service of articulating her subjects—that is, quite specifically, their variegated skin tones and clothing textures—and as a means of ensuring obfuscation. In Ojih Odutola’s hands, the line remains an intentional mark both delineating skin and surface and exposing it as an unstable socially-coded terrain.

In recent years, solo exhibitions of Ojih Odutola’s work have been mounted by the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, GA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.

Zadie Smith’s first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and The Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award. Her second, The Autograph Man, won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith’s third novel, On Beauty, won the Orange Prize for Fiction, A Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her fourth novel, NW, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Swing Time, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker 2017. Her first essay collection, Changing My Mind, was published in 2009 and her second, Feel Free, in 2018.

Zadie Smith is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has twice been listed as one of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Novelists. She writes regularly for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books and is a tenured professor of creative writing at New York University.

Left: Zadie Smith, Photo © Dominique Nabokov

Right: Toyin Ojih Odutola, Photo by Ryan Lowry. © Toyin Ojih Odutola. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.











When: Mon., Dec. 3, 2018 at 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Where: The Drawing Center
35 Wooster St. (Grand-Broome Sts.)
212-219-2166
Price: $10
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Join us for a conversation between writer Zadie Smith and For Opacity artist Toyin Ojih Odutola. On the heels of Smith’s essay on Ojih Odutola in British Vogue, this dialogue will explore the “Afroternative” present that permeates Ojih Odutola’s drawings, and how that alternative collides with our reality.

Toyin Ojih Odutola (b. 1985, Nigeria) distinguishes herself by the range of materials she uses, including graphite, white and black charcoal, ballpoint pen, pastel, color pencil, and marker, each of which she employs both in the service of articulating her subjects—that is, quite specifically, their variegated skin tones and clothing textures—and as a means of ensuring obfuscation. In Ojih Odutola’s hands, the line remains an intentional mark both delineating skin and surface and exposing it as an unstable socially-coded terrain.

In recent years, solo exhibitions of Ojih Odutola’s work have been mounted by the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, GA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.

Zadie Smith’s first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of The Whitbread First Novel Award, The Guardian First Book Award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and The Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award. Her second, The Autograph Man, won The Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith’s third novel, On Beauty, won the Orange Prize for Fiction, A Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her fourth novel, NW, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Swing Time, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker 2017. Her first essay collection, Changing My Mind, was published in 2009 and her second, Feel Free, in 2018.

Zadie Smith is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has twice been listed as one of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Novelists. She writes regularly for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books and is a tenured professor of creative writing at New York University.

Left: Zadie Smith, Photo © Dominique Nabokov

Right: Toyin Ojih Odutola, Photo by Ryan Lowry. © Toyin Ojih Odutola. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Buy tickets/get more info now