© Toyin Ojih Odutola / Courtesy of Tamarind Institute
Interpretation
A narrative is implied through a spiral of shifting postures in the triptych Birmingham, a series of portraits of the artist’s brother based on photographs taken in their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Describing her work from this period, Odutola has remarked that she was confronting "this notion we have in America . . . that ‘black bodies’ could only occupy a few, specific locations and frames in order to feel authentic. . . . that the black image is only profitable in certain spaces—within the realm of entertainment or sports, for instance—was off-putting, to say the least." Although the work’s title names a geographic location, the figure stands against an open background, leaving his context to the imagination. Presenting a sequence of perspectives, this portrait is also a study of the expressive potential of posture and pose, recalling the tradition of academic figure studies—as Viola does with facial expressions in the work at left.
Information
- Title
- Birmingham
- Object Number
- 2017-5 a-c
- Medium
- Triptych; lithographs with gold leaf
- Dates
- 2014
- Dimensions
- each: 61 × 41.9 cm (24 × 16 1/2 in.)
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase, Felton Gibbons Fund
- Culture
- American
- Materials
- Techniques
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