The Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola garnered widespread critical acclaim with her three-part series of paintings and drawings about a “fictionalised husband duo” in Nigeria and their respective families. In it she imagines an Africa where colonial conquest never happened, and what that may have looked like. “It was the beginning of my exploration into how wealth is depicted when historically oppressed subjects are not only in ownership of their bodies and their selfhood, but also their capital and surroundings,” Ojih Odutola told Charlotte Jansen in Elephant Issue 33. As evidenced here, the series is a masterful reinvention of portraiture traditions in opulent colours and undulating lines.
