Odili Donald Odita

“I want to open painting to complex and nuanced cultural perspectives. I want to open painting to difference and to possibility, however it can be imagined.”

Odita (he/him) uses color and pattern in abstract paintings, murals, and other public artworks that place African art and culture in dialogue with Western aesthetics. His large-scale pieces speak to issues of cultural diversity, his experiences as a Nigerian-born artist, and what he describes as “an embrace of all that is African despite one’s location in the world.” In the boldly colored, large-scale work Walls of Change (2021), Odita says he was responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and civil protests of the time. The outdoor Negative Space (2019) used color theory in 13 flags representing the original 13 colonies of the US to examine issues of immigration and separation of migrant families. Odita’s work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, ICA Miami, Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, Prospect.4, and the Venice Biennale. He is an associate professor of painting at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. He earned an MFA from Bennington College and a BFA from Ohio State University.