Toyin Ojih Odutola – U22. Adijatu Street
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin
Exhibition documentation, 2025
This series documented Toyin Ojih Odutola’s first solo exhibition in Germany at Hamburger Bahnhof, where the East Gallery was transformed into the fictional “Adijatu Street” subway station. The commission focused on installation views and close studies of her narrative drawings, tracing how large-scale portraits, architectural details and the staging of the space explore movement, skin, light and darkness as ways to address power, colonial history and notions of identity and desire.
Exhibition text by Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
The Hamburger Bahnhof is showing figurative drawings by Toyin Ojih Odutola: The narrative portraits trace the lives of various protagonists and show everyday or monumental settings, often interwoven with architectural details .
Ojih Odutola transforms the museum's East Gallery into "Adijatu Street," a station on the fictional U22 subway line, to explore the interplay of movement and history. Influenced by her upbringing as a West African woman in the American South, Odutola's work examines social and political dynamics through the medium of skin, the fluidity of expression, and the significance of darkness and light. The artist's first solo exhibition in Germany features approximately 25 works on paper and canvas.
Toyin Ojih Odutola (born 1985 in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, lives and works in New York, USA) focuses on the human figure in her work, using traditional materials such as ink, charcoal, and pastels for her large-scale, complex portraits. In her narrative works, Odutola constructs complex fictional mythologies and invites viewers to question power dynamics, colonial history, and the perception of African expression and sexual orientation.